There are undoubtedly biographical elements in "Araby ," as there are in many of Joyce's works. The young Joyce, like the unnamed boy narrator, lived in genteel poverty in Dublin, moving around from place to place due to his father's improvidence. Growing up in the city, Joyce came to...
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feel the paralysis of Irish life, which manifested itself most strongly in this decaying outpost of the British Empire.
The boy's neighborhood, like the many inhabited by Joyce in his childhood, has seen better days (rather like Ireland herself). And it is little wonder that he wants to escape into an altogether more glamorous, more exciting world—the world represented by the bazaar.
Joyce too would escape into a different world: the world of the writer. This major change in his life's direction involved his leaving Ireland in his early twenties, never to return. As far as he was concerned, Ireland, whether it was under the temporal control of the British or under the spiritual control of the Catholic Church, was no place for an artist, especially not one who aspired to contribute to the European literary tradition. For Joyce, the continent of Europe was his "Araby," but unlike the boy in the story, he found it.