Araby by James Joyce

Essay by pakihotie1983University, Bachelor'sA-, May 2004

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Many people can relate intuitively to James Joyce's Araby in one way or another. We all have had some incident in our lives where we wanted something so badly, but so many things ended going wrong that it was incapable for us to get it. As Ms. Leah Conner asserts, "the story's ends with an epiphany". Webster defines epiphany as a sudden intuitive leap of perceptiveness, especially through an ordinary but striking occurrence. This very well pertains to this story because it is in the end that these events direct the narrator to be enlighten and allow for a new level of knowledge and understanding. The story has three distinguished assertions. They begins with the comprehension of the transition of the boy from adolescence to adulthood, the second part deals with the "blindness" or ignorance that is vastly symbolized throughout the story regarding the lack of awareness among the characters, and the third is the boy's undoubted attraction to Mangan's sister which he has confused with love.

The boy's transition into adulthood begins with his pursuit to get a gift for the girl. He unconsciously, tries to prove that he is a "man" by letting her know that he can provide for her while impressing her all at once. In doing so, it becomes a game in which he has to fulfill his mission in order to be the winner. This is noticed when "these noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes...." (Ibid, 238). Consequently, his infatuation with the girl becomes his first step in letting go of his childhood. This is obvious when the narrator mentions how he saw his "companions playing....their cries reached me weakened and indistinct" (Ibid, 239). At this point,