by Brandon Thurston

Created on: May 09, 2008   Last Updated: March 18, 2009

In James Joyce's "Araby," the unnamed narrator is infatuated with the sister of his friend, Mangan. He hopes to buy a gift for her at the Araby bazaar, which serves to him as an image of escape from the hindering environment of his neighborhood in Dublin. Through these characters and this setting, Joyce communicates the theme that in man's youthful idealism and his naive desire, he discovers an opposing disappointment, caused by his immaturity and the limitations of his world.

For the narrator, his everyday life in Dublin, Ireland is a monotonous frustration. Joyce alludes to how secluded and limited the community is in the first paragraph: "North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground" (Joyce 155). "Araby," is one story in Joyce's Dubliners collection, in which, overall, the author attempts to realistically reflect the lives of Irish readers of the time (Kelly 154). Warren Beck writes, "['Araby'] is also a specifically placed and furnished story, and thereby part of Joyce's evaluative mirroring of Dublin" (97). Surrounded by the repetitiveness of his neighborhood, the narrator is attracted apparently only to the fulfillment he expects to attain from both the "Araby" bazaar and Mangan's sister. While moving through the community, he is frequently preoccupied with what he feels is a more important desire. Beck states: "His imagination dwelt so continuously on the girl that "serious work" at school was made to seem 'ugly monotonous child's play' as her image came between him and the page" (97).

To the narrator's perceptions, his external world is unceasingly insufficient and obstructing to the possibility of his fulfillment of life. The boy nearly does not make it to the bazaar because of his uncle arrives home late after work. J.S. Atherton writes of the importance of the uncle as it relates to Joyce's depiction of Dublin: "Joyce saw the city as dominated by unpleasant, selfish, self-satisfied, self-indulgent and self-important father-figures whom the women and children feared and served" (41). The uncle's lateness is likely due to drunkenness, as: "At nine o'clock I heard my uncle's latchkey in the halldoor. I heard him talking to himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had received the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret these signs" (Joyce 159).

As much as he feels he is discouraged and repelled by his community, the narrator encounters

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