How does Joyce use foreshadowing to prepare for the boy's epiphany in "Araby"?

The foreshadowing comes the day of the bazaar. That morning, the boy reminds his uncle of the bazaar, but the uncle is preoccupied and answers "curtly." As the boy walks to school, he notes that "my heart misgave me." That is an important signal that the bazaar is not going to work out as the boy had planned.

As the narrator waits for his uncle to return home, he paces impatiently and has tea with his aunt and Mrs. Mercer. When she leaves, it is late: eight o'clock. Foreshadowing the unravelling, the boy clenches his fists. The boy's aunt says to him,

I'm afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.

When the uncle whom he is depending on to give him the money for the bazaar comes in, having been drinking, it is nine. At this point, the disappointment is further foreshadowed:

"The people are in bed and after their first sleep now," he [the uncle] said.
I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically: "Can't you give him the money and let him go? You've kept him late enough as it is."

Although the boy does head out for the bazaar, we know already what he is going to discover: he is too late. He may dream of escape from his dull existence, but the reality is he is a powerless boy, at the mercy of an uncle who isn't unkind but also isn't particularly sensitive to his needs. Araby, too, may sound exotic, but it is in Dublin and still part of the humdrum life he knows there.

In the exposition to his story "Araby," Joyce creates a dark and cheerless scene:  the boy's street is "blind"; the houses "gazed at one another with brown, impeturbable faces"; the air in the house is musty; the air outside in the sombre light is cold, stinging the boy and his friends as they traverse the muddy lanes where they run "the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages."

That the boy would romanticize his love for Mangan's sister as an escape from his dismal life seems likely.  When she steps upon her doorstep, in worshipful fashion--after his reference to the Latin works and Catholic devotionals--the boys leave "their shadows and walk up to Mangan's steps" to watch her body move and the "soft rope of her hair" toss from side to side.

The suggestions of this idealization and romantizing of the girl as an escape from his brown, shadowed life is indicated in this exposition:

When she came out on the doorstep, my heart leadped....her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood....Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance....All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled....

Sadly, after his uncle returns home late and he arrives late to the bizarre, the boy finds himself later "gazing up into the darkness" where he experiences his epiphany: The closed bazaar is anything but romantic. In this dark, hollow place, the boy's idea of the girl as the holy grail has been destroyed, instead being replaced by the empty, dark hallway where the boy drops his florin.  Bereft, the boy finds himself "gazing up into the darkness":

I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

In addition to this foreshadowing, Joyce's use of first-person narration, which conveys the confused thoughts of the boy and familiarizes the reader with the boy's character, prepares the reader for his epiphany.

What is the irony in "Araby"?

In the short story “Araby” by James Joyce, a young boy is devastated when he is unable to fulfill his heroic quest and buy a gift for the girl with whom he is infatuated.

The unnamed narrator and protagonist is excited at the prospect of heading off to the bazaar and buying something nice for the girl he fancies. Seeing himself in the role of a medieval knight, the young lad jumps at the chance to do something heroic and thereby escape the confines of his drab, workaday existence, even if only for a few hours.

Unfortunately, hope turns to crushing disappointment when the boy arrives at the bazaar just as it is closing. Even though one of the vendors is still open and asks him if he wants to buy something, the boy chooses not to. All the romance that had been burning away in his soul has now been doused by cold, hard reality.

This unhappy ending to the story is a prime example of what is called situational irony, which occurs when there is a gap between what was expected to happen and what actually happens. The boy is expecting to buy Mangan's sister a wonderful gift at the exciting bazaar, but what actually happened was that he leaves the dreary bazaar empty-handed, his heart sunk in sadness and disappointment.

Identify one example of irony and its type in James Joyce's "Araby".

There may be several kinds of irony identified in James' Joyce's short story, "Araby." Perhaps the most striking example surrounds the bazaar when the narrator arrives.

First, consider one definition of irony: it is the difference between what is expected and what actually happens. In Joyce's story, we must look for something that is anticipated in one way and finally perceived in a very different way later.

The narrator is a young man who is infatuated with the older sister of his friend Mangan. Once the narrator starts to believe that he is in love, he is obsessed by thoughts of the older girl; he secretly watches her and follows her to school—when she leaves in the morning, the narrator flies out his door to follow her, passing her only as she turns off the route he is following. He does this over and again, day after day.

One day, while her brothers are quibbling, the narrator and Mangan's sister speak. She laments the fact that she cannot attend the bazaar in town because she is going on a religious retreat. She wonders if he is going. Quickly he promises to bring her something if he does attend. When the day comes, he impatiently waits for his uncle to return home and give him money to go to the bazaar. Finally on his way, he is excited by the mystery and glamour he expects to find there. The train seems to crawl on its way, heightening his anticipation, and expressing the narrator's aching desire to arrive—especially having been delayed so long:

After an intolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly. It crept onward among ruinous houses and over the twinkling river.  

At Westland Row Station, other passengers try to gain entry to the train, but they are turned away: this train is only going to the fairgrounds. This also may raise the narrator's excitement; perhaps having the "bare carriage" to himself gives him a dream-like feeling—having perceived himself earlier as a knight ("...I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes"), his journey seems to have taken on shades of a holy crusade: as he strives to "win" a token for his lady-love. He still believes this as:

In front of me was a large building which displayed the magical name.

In the young man's mind, even the name has evoked hopes, dreams and imaginary events. However, as he enters (paying too much in his haste and desire to get inside), it is not at all what he expected:

Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after a service. I walked into the centre of the bazaar timidly.

The narrator approaches one of the vendors that is still open. His manner has changed: he is disappointed, becoming timid, and allowing himself to be put off from his errand:

The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars...

The narrator declines when asked if he wishes to purchase something. The fire that had burned in him since he made the promise to Mangan's sister is gone, and he is disheartened. This is situational irony—a difference between what the narrator expected and what actually occurred. He accomplished nothing; the fair was a disappointment.

More so, there is dramatic irony: the reader is fairly certain that the narrator will not return a hero; even with a gift, Mangan's sister will not love him as he believes he loves her. 

What irony is present in "Araby"?

Irony is a contrast between appearance and actuality. In this story, the innocent young boy thinks he's in love with Mangan's sister. He sees himself as a religious hero and equates the young girl to the Virgin Mary. His feelings for her at the beginnning are very strong. "But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires." He confuses his crush on her with his religious teachings and goes to Araby, a bazaar sponsored by the church, to buy her a present when the young girl says she can't go. He tells her he'll buy her something if he goes to the bazaar.

The young narrator expects the bazaar to be magical, a place that reflects his feelings for the girl and his enthusiasm for his religion. He has an "epiphany" after he arrives, a moment of insight where he understands the actuality of his feelings for the young girl. Once he understands his feelings for her, he then sees Araby for what it is, just a place to buy trinkets. He feels angry at himself and probably is disappointed, but this is part of his transformation from innocence to a more mature understanding of what it's all about. He expects one thing before he gets to Araby, but his "epiphany" allows him to see the reality of what it really is.

Though irony is not the most dominant element of "Araby," it (irony) does play a part in the story. One place you can see irony is in the tension between appearance and reality, and between appearance and vision. The story starts with the line " NORTH RICHMOND STREET being blind…" Well, it is "blind" in the sense of being a dead end, but also in the sense of people not seeing things clearly there. The houses stare at one another, even though one of them is empty; the narrator seems to encounter only a symbolic façade at the end of the story. Likewise, there is irony in the distance between the anticipated wonder of the bazaar and the narrator's disappointment at the end of the story, where he finds himself " as a creature driven and derided by vanity."

How does irony in "Araby" heighten the story's moment of epiphany?

The narrator's situation is ironic because he believed the exotically named Araby bazaar would somehow be different and more enchanting than his ordinary, drab Dublin world, even though it occurred in the heart of Dublin. The boy thinks he can show his power and impress Mangan's sister, his object of desire, by bringing her back a special gift from this bazaar.

The narrator has to wait for his alcoholic uncle to get home to get the money he needs to go the bazaar, and by the time he gets there, it is closing. Worse, it is unimpressive, especially in its closing stages, and it is peopled with ordinary Dubliners. The only things on sale are ordinary goods: the boy examines "porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets." Ironically, there is nothing here for him—or for Mangan's sister—that in any way represents the exotic.

The irony of the setting, amid flirting commonplace Dubliners, a bazaar emptying and shutting down, and the sounds of money being counted out adds to the poignancy of the narrator's epiphany. He is ashamed and angry that he expected something beyond the humdrum at "Araby" as he stands amid a place and people that exemplify all the dullness of the culture he wanted to escape.

There are many different types of irony, but, in general terms, something is ironic when something very different than what was expected happens. Often, irony is used for comedic purposes but, in the case of James Joyce's "Araby," irony has more to do with bitterness and melancholy than with humor. 

In "Araby," a little boy has an intense crush on Mangan's sister, one of the girls living in his neighborhood. Mangan's sister asks the narrator to buy her a gift at the bazaar, and the boy gleefully imagines this to be his chance to prove his love through some grand, romantic gesture. However, when the boy finally arrives at the bazaar, he finds it to be a far cry from the exotic adventure he imagined, as it is dark, largely empty, and uninviting. The story ends with an epiphany, as the narrator realizes his dreams of love have been foolish childhood fantasies.

The irony here is that, instead of being an exciting display of foreign treasures, the bazaar is rather disappointing. Moreover, despite his obsessive desire to find a gift for Mangan's sister, the narrator does not ultimately buy her anything. The ironic end emphasizes the narrator's epiphany and displays the foolishness of his childhood fantasies, revealing them to be at odds with the harsh reality of the adult world. All in all, irony is an important element in "Araby," as its presence underlines the bitterness of the narrator's epiphany. 

How does Joyce use irony to heighten the epiphany in "Araby"?

When Mangan's sister asks the narrator if he is going to Araby, she calls it "splendid," and the bazaar immediately begins to conjure exotic and romantic images in his head. He says,

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.

He imagines finding a perfect gift for his love, something different and unique that will show her just how much he feels for her. He arrives, seeing the building with "the magical name" of Araby displayed on it. However, when he enters, the silence reminds him of "a church after a service": hardly the exotic and exciting sounds he anticipated. He sees men "counting money on a salver" under a cafe name in lights. He hears the coins clinking together; again, such sounds fail to meet the expectations created by the bazaar's name. Looking at one of the few open stalls, he sees "porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets" and a small group of young English men and one young lady talking and laughing flirtatiously. The magic he imagined is drowned in the ordinary, and the romance he anticipated is smothered by cheap flirtation. Certainly, reality does not answer his expectations, and this irony extends to his epiphany, namely, his recognition that the world does not turn by love and hope—despite his feeling that his love and hope were the most important things in the world.

A quite specific instance of irony immediately precedes the boy's epiphany in the story. 

At the bazaar, the boy overhears a distinctly banal, playful conversation being carried on between a young woman and two young men. The banter they carry on is far from romantic. 

...he overhears a conversation between an English shop-girl and two young men. Their talk is nothing but idle gossip.

The irony in this moment stems from the idea that the boy has come to the bazaar driven by a romantic impulse. Romance is not a part of the real dealings between the men and women he encounters. Real dealings between the sexes, in the example of the overheard conversation, are rude and playful. 

The boy realizes that he has been following a false idea as he leaves the booth where he overheard the conversation. The lights of the hall go out at one end, bringing the boy back into the shadows once again (a place he occupies for much of the story, like one of the figures from Plato's "Allegory of the Cave").

Ironically, the boy comes to the realization that he had been blind as the lights go out.