Discussion Topic

Setting and Influence on Characters in "Araby"

Summary:

"Araby," a short story in James Joyce's Dubliners, is set in early 20th-century Dublin, Ireland, primarily on North Richmond Street. The setting reflects the narrator's emotional state, characterized by feelings of entrapment and longing for escape. The dreary Dublin environment and the narrator's idealized vision of the Araby bazaar as a place of exoticism contrast with the mundane reality he encounters. This realization leads to his epiphany about the illusions he holds regarding love, religion, and identity.

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What is the setting of "Araby"?

Araby” is set in Dublin, Ireland in various places around the city.

At the onset of the story, the boy is on the street where he lives, North Richmond Street. He frequently meets his friends and they play in the street until dusk falls and they go home for dinner. It is there, in the shadows, that he watches Mangan’s sister as she looks for her brother to call him home.

The setting switches to inside the narrator’s house, where he watches every morning for Mangan’s sister to leave her house. Her stepping outside cues him to grab his books and follow her; he does not have the nerve to speak to her, so he passes her on the street instead.

The narrator tells of Saturday evenings when he walks through the market with his aunt and dreams of the girl. Eventually, she speaks to him to find out if he will go to Araby, and he promises to bring her a present from the bazaar. He continues to dream of her at night in his room and during the day in his classroom, where he is unable to concentrate. Araby becomes important to him because he convinces himself that she might like him if he buys her a gift.

On the night of the bazaar, the boy waits impatiently for his uncle to come home; the sooner they eat dinner, the sooner he can go. However, it’s after 9:00 by the time his uncle returns, and the boy angrily paces the room waiting. Next, the boy walks down Buckingham Street to the train which will take him to his dream.

The story ends at the bazaar, the one place that the narrator has yearned to visit. This setting is important to the story because it is where the narrator’s epiphany takes place. Most of the stalls have closed and darkness envelops the bazaar. Of the few stalls that remain open, there is little that he might purchase as a gift for Mangan’s sister. The boy now believes that he will never have a chance with the girl because he has no opportunity to buy her a present. The truth is, he never had a chance with her. He learns that situations do not always work out the way we dream, noting, “I knew my stay was useless.”

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What is the setting of "Araby"?

When the story opens, the narrator describes the street where he lives, namely, North Richmond Street, which is a now well-known road in Dublin, Ireland.  The narrator also references the Christian Brothers' School, which opened in 1829 on North Richmond Street.  This detail helps to confirm that we are in Dublin, Ireland's capital city.  The story appears in James Joyce's collection called The Dubliners, which was published in 1914. However, the story itself was written around 1905 (and this is when it seems to take place).  

The story is written in a first person objective point of view, meaning that the narrator is a participant in the story's events and is narrating them after the events of the story have taken place.  He uses past tense verbs to tell this story of his childhood love and disappointment and to describe how he came to a more accurate understanding of his place in the world.

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What is the setting of "Araby"?

This is the third story in the Dubliners collection and the final one in the group of stories that are concerned with childhood. It was written in October 1905, and it was the 11th story that Joyce wrote for the collection. The story takes place in Dublin, Ireland, at the beginning of the 20th century. Dublin at the time was seen by Joyce as the place of spiritual paralysis, where aspirations and dreams died:

My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis.

The story begins with a vivid description of the street where the narrator lived as a boy:

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street…an uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end…the other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.

The exterior evokes the images of suffocation and restriction in which the protagonist dwells. The text continues to focus on an atmosphere of waste and abandonment, as the former tenant of the house, a priest, has died in the house’s back drawing-room. Readers understand that the protagonist has to grapple with living in such stifling conditions.

The last part of the story takes place at “Araby,” a fair that comes to Dublin. The narrator’s idealized vision of the bazaar, which previously “cast an Eastern enchantment” over him, is completely obliterated. “Eastern enchantment” is replaced by the image of emptiness and a feeling of silence. The narrator realizes that there is nothing exotic and oriental about the bazaar and that it cannot make Dublin a more appealing place to live in.

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What is the setting of "Araby"?

Just to set the record straight so you don't leave this page believing a misconception about James Joyce, he was Irish, not English as I think coachingcorner writes.  He is a cornerstone of 20th-century Irish literature, and he is definitely Irish.  The enotes Study Guide on the short story collection Dubliners, which "Araby" comes from says:

James Joyce was born in 1882 in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland in a large, Catholic family, and received a private education in Jesuit schools; thereafter, he attended University College, Dublin, on scholarship. His family life, though warm, was immersed in the turbulent Irish politics of the time and the early arguments Joyce overheard about various Irish leaders filtered their way into Joyce’s fiction.

But you don't need to take my word or even the word of enotes for this.  Read any criticism on Joyce and you'll find he is Irish.  Many consider him the greatest novelist writing in English of the 20th century.  The Irish are very proud of him.

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What is the setting of "Araby"?

In the short story "Araby" from the collection "Dubliners" by James Joyce, it is also important to consider how the political atmosphere of the time pervades the Dublin city setting. Ireland at that time was considered part of England by the British - many of whom (such as Joyce himself) had become partly at one with the Irish - there were many well-to-do so-called Anglo-Irish families in Dublin and they lived a life not dissimilar to the upper middle classes in England. They went to balls in Georgian houses eith crystal chandeliers in the hall. There were servants and horse cabs to take people home. "Araby" takes place in one of the more 'faded gentility' areas of Dublin at the cusp of its passing into a new era of bitter civil war.

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What is the setting of "Araby"?

"Araby" takes place in Dublin, Ireland, around 1905, when the story was written.  It is the third story in James Joyce's collection of short stories entitled The Dubliners.  This collection of stories is Joyce's portrayal of the problems that face the Irish people around the turn of the century.  "Araby" is one of the most well known stories from this collection.

The story begins with a description of North Richmond Street, which is portrayed as quiet and "blind."  "Blind" is particularly well chosen because it means both a dead end as well as without vision.  The narrator's house on North Richmond Street is "musty" and "enclosed."  But the narrator, in his youth, is oblivious to the staleness that pervades his surroundings.  His attention is focused on Mangan's sister whose image allows him to escape the dreariness of  his surroundings.

Within this general setting of Dublin, Joyce depicts such specific settings as the narrator's house, the neighborhood streets and yards, Mangan sister's house, the market place, the train station, and finally Araby, the bazaar--the narrator's destination, the destination that allows the narrator to see himself for what he is:  "A creature driven and derided by vanity."

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How does the setting of "Araby" influence the story?

Just to add to the cogent details already mentioned in Post #4, there is much significance to the books that the boy discovers in the priest's room.  The Abbot by Sir Walter Scott idealizes Mary Queen of Scots, who was less that an examplarary Catholic, The Memoirs ofVidocq is a popular account of the exploits of a criminal turned detective; the novel is a blend of invention, sensationalism, and prurience--all but one are odd books for a priest to have read.  These suggest, too, the boy's confusion of the religious fervor, idealism, and sexual attraction in his infatuation with Mangan's sister.

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What is the setting of James Joyce's "Araby"?

First, it helps to be aware that the short story, "Araby," comes from a book of short works written by James Joyce, and this book is called Dubliners. Therefore, it makes sense to assume the stories it contains are all about various folk who live in Dublin, Ireland, the city in which Joyce himself was born and raised. Additionally, the first line of the story refers to the narrator's childhood home's location on North Richmond Street, a road located in Dublin. 

It is likely that the main events of the story took place in the early years of the twentieth century, given the descriptions of homes, schools, and daily life, though the speaker narrates these events from some time in the future, when he is an adult, using a first person objective point of view. 

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How does the setting advance the story in "Araby"?

Think about the metaphors of blindness and silence Joyce uses to describe where these characters live; the street is "blind," the rooms airless, someone has just died. The only life and color that is introduced into this boy's world comes through his awareness of a girl's braid of hair. Where she is, is light and sound; everywhere else is cast in shadow. There is promising activity, but it slows up again while he has to wait, bored and impatient, for his uncle to return home. He gets his money, gets on a train; the train moves too slowly, and when he gets to the mystical Araby fair, the place is closing down, being plunged into darkness and silence, as is the boy. The story begins with the metaphor of darkness and silence, and ends on the same note, with a twist. Now the protagonist is not just aware of how colorless his world is, he is also disgusted with himself for his vanity; it is a sin. The background Joyce alludes to, but only briefly paints, is the world of Irish Catholicism, where a young man in the throes of his first real crush, is nonetheless surrounded by a claustrophobic, self-absorbed world where the "decent" inhabitants all know each other's business, and watch, silently, while life passes them by. The narrator knows he will be one of them now, since he has let himself down. He dreamed a grand dream, and could not deliver on its promise.

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How does the setting advance the story in "Araby"?

The setting is very dark, dreary, and depressing.  It is set in Dublin, Ireland, when it was still under British control.  Many were living in poverty and had no job.  Gathering places were small pubs, which led to much drinking, and a lot of alcohol abuse.  The narrator's uncle, for example, comes home late, which makes the narrator angry, and he comes home drunk.  The narrator and his aunt and uncle live in a dreary home on a dreary street that is dark and depressing.  The story details the narrator's obsession with one of his friend's sisters.  A normally good student, the narrator neglects everything in his life to watch this girl and he becomes intent on buying her a gift at the market after he promises her one.  Because the setting is dark and not cheerful or happy, the reader can assume that the outcome might not be this way.  This happens with the narrator has an epiphany after getting to the market.  He realizes that he has wasted his time by obsessing over the girl and that his life is not as it seems.  

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