"Araby", James Joyce

Résumé du document

This short story was written by James Joyce who lived from 1882 to 1941; it is an extract from 'Dubliners', published in 1914. The book is compound with several short stories which took place in Dublin, and deals with the monotone life of some people. The text is entitled 'Araby', and tells the story of the unrequited love of a young boy trapped in his everyday life. The events are presented through the voice of an anonymous narrator, who narrates the boy's difficulty in trying to escape from his everyday routine, and his prosaic life. The author tackles many themes and symbols, which allows the reader to enter into a dark world surrounded by frustration, sadness and reality.

Extraits

[...] Although the vocabulary of decay is mainly used to describe domestic world, it seems that the narrator feels good in the house, and likes its negative aspects and some useless objects of the past. For example the book he prefers is the most spoiled, he also likes the “rusty bicycle-pump” which is a prosaic object. Moreover, the house appears to him to be a safe place (“safely housed” l it is paradoxical because he says too that high, cold, empty, gloomy rooms liberated” him and the stables which can be considered like close spaces like the house, are spaces of softness l 22). [...]

[...] The boy is in contradiction with the world he lives in because this world is a material one whereas the boy is a very sensitive person. But in spite of this difference, the boy agrees with his condition, at the end of the story he is conscious that it is no worse striving to get out of there that's why he easily gives up. The author uses some motifs in the text in order to provide the reader with some clue to foresee the outcome of the event. [...]

[...] It shows that she is like a dream and a glimmer of hope in the boy's gloomy life; the city is tinged with death and the girl represents purity, idealism. The author also creates an opposition between the boy's passivity at the beginning and his spirit when he thinks about or sees the girl l 34, l 34, “followed” l 34, “quickened my pace and passed l 36). This device emphasizes the power of love. There is also an opposition in the sentence: “from amiability to sternness” and between the “apple tree” 11) and wild garden” 11). [...]

[...] Related with this motif, we can find too the one of 66) and “needles” which shows that this event will be painful to the boy. The motif of the window is important in the text. The word appears many times 54) and it is the symbol of the limit between domestic and public life. When the boy watches the object of his dream, he is indoors and looks at the external world through the window; it shows the difficulty to mingle internal life, desires and reality. The window represents the filter which exists between the two worlds and that the boy cannot see. [...]

[...] This short story is really representative of the whole book by James Joyce, which is entitled Dubliners. With its themes of routine, unrequited love and dream sullied by reality, it raises the problem of the difficulties to live a true passion in a material world. This story can be considered like a tragic one because no hope is left at the end, the boy has definitely given up. Joyce is reaffirming his pessimistic view of life where everybody tends to passion but where nobody is able to fight to fulfil his dream, what is also shown in the story of "Eveline". [...]