Araby

Grade Levels

Excerpt

• “Araby” is written in the retrospective point of view as an adult narrator recalls himself as a boy growing up in Dublin, Ireland, in the early 1900s. How does the narrator describe the house where he lived and the neighborhood where he played? What are some details that suggest the setting of the story?
• Who lived in the house before the narrator and his aunt and uncle moved in? What books did he leave behind? What might the books imply about him and his life?
• How does the narrator describe the streets of the city on the Saturday evenings when he went shopping with his aunt? What evidence suggests that he did not identify with life as it existed around him? How did he seem to see himself in contrast?
• The narrator recalls, “The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me.” What does “Eastern enchantment” suggest about his view of the bazaar? How would he have imagined it?

About

These eNotes Reading Response Prompts are designed to encourage your students to read more effectively and with more pleasure by giving them interesting subjects to write about after they have read. Many of the prompts will take them directly into the text, while others will give them an opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings and to reflect on their own experiences.

A second purpose of the eNotes Reading Response Prompts is to facilitate instruction in ways that work for you in the classroom. The organization of the prompts makes them easy to use, and the content and construction of the prompts are designed to develop students’ knowledge and academic skills.