An Introspective Case Into James Joyce’s Araby Essay

He elegantly individualifies the homes on North Richmond Street as conscious of decent lives indoors them which gazed at ane a nonher with br throwish imperturbable faces. And the street it self blind (Joyce Pg. 328). These stolon hardly a(prenominal) lines of the short fictionalisation account Araby indicate barely what the story entails. What desperately awaits the reader, in jam Joyces discovering tale of a materialisation male child who comes to terms with his repressively exigent yet illusory living environment, is a straight reflectivity of the Authors let experiences as a Dubliner.The narration is intertwined with positions of escapism from a forever workaday existence which lacks form and delirious freedom. Whether the transparent symbolization, which balances this reflection, is stringently of religious denotation or of purely mental creed is not the discussion at hand. In fact, it is merely a coming of age tale with a religious undertone as Joyce ne ver disappoints to tie his attitude on religion and life into his fiction.Araby begins by describing the t stimulate of Dublin, Ireland as quite hope slight and despairing a place that is not necessarily filled with game and spontaneity, as through the cashiers subjective eyes. When we met in the street the houses had grown darktowards it (the sky) the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. (Joyce Pg. 328) With key news bear witnesss such as somber and feeble in the front few paragraphs alone, Joyce sets up a mood for the later plot. This description shows that the boy is not too kindly of his surroundings in fact, undermining them.Traditionally this fictional plot may be best described as man verse society although, eyepatch relating Araby to Joyce we come to discover it may actually be man verses himself. The boy announces the career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanesto the gumption doors of the dark dripping gardens (Joyce Pg. 328). In one l ine alone the word dark run shorts repetitive. Undeniably the spring wishes to describe Dublin as the to the lowest degree of favorable places for a childs youth. This may set up an indication into a piece of personal seed by Joyce. The boy, whose recognise Joyce chooses to remain anonymous, is likelyly struggling with the ommunity he resides in just as Joyce had done.This struggle may be felt on a strictly psychological level the boy feels trapped among various characters he comes into progress to with throughout his daily routine his guardians, the school master, the sottish men, bargaining women and frequent boys of the market and the English speaking girl of the bazaar. These characters all form a negative impression on his perspective of the community. The young boy recalls my aunty hoped it was not some freemason affair in response to his interrogation for leave to attend the Bazaar (Joyce Pg. 30).Freemasons are members of an underground brotherhood that were thoug ht to be of extreme adversary to the ideals of the church (Griffin). During school the boy quotes I watched my masters face pass from amiability to sternness describing the strict, forceful command provided in Dublin (Joyce Pg 330). This may be a simple reflection of the various foes Joyce has dealt with during his time in Ireland. For casing, Richard Ellman, a famous biographer of Joyce, notes that Joyce was, at one point, a slight alcoholic and had gotten in an extrapolatecation once in a bar in St.Stephens Green (Ellman 162). He also adds that firearm living with a man by the man of Oliver Gogarty, he was violently threatened with a pistol (Ellman 175). For Joyce, these are only a few of some of the harsh experiences living within Dublin. On the other hand, in Araby one character seems to contrast these emotions. An older, curiously mysterious girl, the sister of a close friend Mangan, seems to intrigue him in a spellbinding way. The young boy describes his first hand experie nce with her E genuinely morning I lay on the floor in the front parlor watching her door.I had never spoken to herand yet her name was standardised a summons to all my foolish blood. (Joyce Pg. 329) It seems the narrator is emotionally reign by obsession. With the use of the term foolish, he apparently openly admits of the eventual conclusion to Araby when he realizes his befriending was merely a failed attempt at escapism. However, what sparks his interest in this particularised girl is of the most riveting wonder. more(prenominal) importantly, what compels Joyce to construct such a romantic based use of symbolism is under more precise interrogation.He is using the romantic inclination to figuratively illustrate the narrators inner struggle with society. A few indications amongst the introducing paragraphs that give clues to the narrators feelings are made apparent as he quotes The blind was pulled megabucks to within an inch of the stays so that I could not be seen. (Joyc e Pg. 329) In this line, Joyce signifies that his phlegm to the Catholic culture may have been hidden as a child. If I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my conf utilize adoration may show his confused feelings regarding this imbalance of emotions he experienced in Ireland (Joyce Pg 329).He intends to represent a story of youthful ignorance and unbiased nature, rather than a tale of heartfelt admiration. He uses this plot to represent a paper that mirrors his own conclusion of Ireland Joyce could not absorb his own creative nature as a literary artist out of such a tired culture as a child. It may have lacked the necessary hunger, stimulation, and remainder he so desperately proclivityd. In The Years of Bloom crowd Joyce, writer John McCourt speaks of how Joyce had a furiously tempting early relationship with the Irish Roman Catholic Church (McCourt).He adds that Joyce also had an alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, which may help illustrate this inner conflict with religion and t he community. His confused, indifference can be envisioned through this alter ego as it has been through the naive journey of the young narrator in Araby. As the story of Araby eventually unfolds, we learn that the young boy is deluded by his crush. During his first actual encounter, he wise(p) of her involvement with a convent, which in frankness would have rendered her off the market but the narrator disregards this important point.His unserviceable nature causes him to continue this obsession and transcend it into the anticipation for attending the bazaar rather than facing the reality that she has vowed to the church in becoming a Nun. In fact, this transfer of obsession only shows that the stories underlying theme is not of romance but of self-love. As one critic explains the outcome He has come to subscribe to as just a life in which children play in joyless streets, girls cannot attend bazaars because of convent duties, old ladies collect used stamps for pious purposes, aunts mark time as this night of Our Lord, and even drunken uncles cannot resist moralizing. After a chronology of events strengthens the narrators doubt and weakens his hope on victorious over Mangans sister he suffers from a nose out of disillusion. In reference to the concluding thoughts of the narrator, as Coulthard implies, most commentators omit religion from their list of disenchant influences and regard anguish as the most important word in the narrators climactic memory of his disillusioning boyhood experience(Coulthard). The boy reflects Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a putz driven and derided by vanity and my eyes burned with anguish and peevishness (Joyce Pg. 32).This shows that the boy has not overcome but, in a sense, matured. He has learned of his mistake and has accepted his unfortunate circumstances. It has been verbalise that Joyce traveled back and forth from Ireland to Trieste, to Rome, and then London, then finally Zurich by 1912 never to re turn to Ireland over again (Geheber). It seems that the Narrators change of perspective throughout the tale reflects Joyces contrasting alter-ego and indecisive outlook of the Irish-Roman Catholic culture illustrated by his travels.This soul psychology of naive verses wise nature portrayed by the narrators emotional change seems to capture a piece of Joyce that has been seen throughout his confusingly impersonal feelings with his homeland and the foes he has encountered during his life. The narrators feelings towards the community also become more defined after his comment on a specific book discovered in the back drawing room of his home. perhaps one of the most theme bearing points of the story, the narrator discovers three books.The first both speak of religious tolerance. The Abbot and The darling Communicator are two stories that at once signal highly religious views of god fearing, law imperishable people of extreme holiness. These are both two topics that have been cog nise to frustrate Joyce (Geheber). An Abbot is a superior of an abbey of monks (Hyperdictionary) while being Devout is to be completely devoted to a pious belief (Merriam-Webster). This fealty may go uncanny regarding whether the specific belief draws enormous hand to livelihood.The last book, however, draws the boys interest he quotes I like the last best because its leaves were yellow in reference to The Memoirs of Vidocq (Joyce Pg. 328). The significance to Joyce and the theme of Araby provided by this single reference is intense. As Coulthard notes, The Memoirs of Vidocq, the autobiography of a French policeman and soldier of fortune, would have provided vicarious escape from this Catholic discipline (Coulthard). Eugene Francois Vidocq was a French man of the 18th century who is described as having a mischievous nature causing him to be often at betting odds with his parents (Fleisher).Joyces use of this reference in Araby has more significance than otherwise noted by the na ked eye. Vidocq can also be compared to feelings of disorder being that he ran away from home due to deceitful acts of subversiveness towards his own father. In the comp each of a young woman he ran off with, he traveled to various French seaports seeking conversion to the New World (Fleisher). In the boys words as he describes the book as yellow, we notice a sense of relation to Vidocq as comparing the shade with a sense of virulence and melancholy towards his own family and culture.Also, in a short biographical footing of Joyce in The Norton Introduction to Literature, we learn that pile Joyce had also eloped with a young woman Nora very similar to Vidocqs journey of discharge (Hunter Pg. 391)(Fleisher). This is merely a self-reflection by the author, who makes a strong note of incorporating his own experiences into this piece of literature. In the tale, Joyce continues to combine his own experiences living throughout Europe. It is said that immediately after graduating fr om the local University, as a young fearless man, Joyce promptly fled to genus genus capital of France (Ellman)(Hunter Pg. 91).Paris has always been known as a very artsy, open sagaciousnessed center of creativity (Walz). Descriptions of Paris in the early 20th century may draw upon one to close down a grippingly lucid contrast to the setting so symbolically portrayed in Araby. Joyce describes the transportation during the young boys trip to the Bazaar I strode down Buckingham street toward the stationI took my seat in a third-class private instructor of a deserted train (Joyce Pg. 331). He goes on to describe the dull speed of the train as an intolerable delay. This is a great example of the large contrast to the well known metro system of Paris at the time.There is no question that Joyces comparison of Paris to his indigenous Irish ascetic culture greatly influenced the context of his work. In reference to the popular surrealist culture arising in 20th century Paris one crit ic quotes In plus to its better known literary and artistic origins, the French surrealist movement drew inspiration from currents of psychological misgiving and rebellion running through a shadowy side of view culture, specifically in fantastic popular fiction and sensationalistic news media (Walz).Surrealism was a movement of writers and artists that used fantastic images to represent unconscious thoughts and dreams very similar to the display of symbolism used by Joyce in Araby. Additionally, this psychological anxiety and rebellion are exactly the underlying emotions felt by the narrator through out his journey toward realism. Although Joyce was not a true surrealist, numerous of the techniques revolving around these literary methods can be easily seen within his work Ulysses (Ellis-Christensen).In this novel, Joyce uses the idea of a stream of consciousness. Although, less apparent, these same methods and techniques of thought will begin to emerge among the lines of Araby, but in a much more figurative sense. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire expresses the Narrator speaking of desire and an inner struggle with himself. These emotions by the narrator most certainly may be shared by the author as well, which initially drove him to Paris and throughout Europe as a young scholar.As Joyce tells the story through the narrators first person perspective, views on life and religion seems to become much more nonliteral than otherwise noticed upon a single reading of the text. Additionally, in James Joyces Concept of the Underthough, Michael Harding explains Joyces use of existential thought in many of his whole kit and caboodle. He goes on to describe how famous Philosopher Ludwig Wittgensteins works on logic relating to ethical and religious points of view had a obscure impact on Joyce (Harding).As Robert C. Solomon defines existentialism, it is disorientation or Confusion from a world based on planned identity and freeing ones mind to think from a non-conditioned perspective (Solomon). This idea of freedom which can be seen in the line when the Christian Brothers School set the boys free is exactly what the narrator strived for in Araby. Alone, this line summarizes Joyces thoughts on religion and how it intrudes on his thoughts of existentialism.Therefore, the underlying religious context of the story is only added by Joyce as a reference to illustrate a conditioned existence. As Coulthard comments only if they were freed into an equally grim world where not even play brought joy, he shows how the entire story clarifies an entire existence of conditioning which Joyce spends many years of external influence deflecting (Coulthard). This is the basis for the theme of escapism and is directly denoted by his many years of philosophic inquiring among other European nations.The entire theme, characters, and setting within the fictional tale of Araby have a much large r than fictional significance to Joyces life. Each line, phrase, and reference has a greater figurative meaning that applies to his struggles throughout his confused and unhinged maturity while in Dublin. While never sure whether to accept the Irish Roman Catholic faith and always striving for something more, Joyce reflects on himself through the narrator of Araby and essentially uses this ale as his own form of escapism.He may have seen himself as an idealist, who felt hindered and limited in his childishness endeavors. From the description of a dark community, to the expression of initial hopefulness, and later self deceit he provides a plot to transcend his own feelings. With the addition of a romantic, yet philosophical context, Joyce clearly shows personal attachment of his perspective on religion and life into his fiction.