“Araby”

Short story centering on an Irish adolescent emerging from boyhood fantasies into the harsh realities of everyday life in his country. Based on his own experiences while growing up in Dublin in the late nineteenth century when Ireland was under British rule. Joyce presents Dublin as a bleak city, with its dreary weather, dreary people, and dreary houses. Boy narrates the story in first-person point of view. Joyce based characters, places, and events in the story on recollections from his boyhood.

The year is The place is North Richmond Street in Ireland's largest city, Dublin. In winter, the narrator and his friends, including a boy named Mangan, play in the street and in the muddy lanes along and behind the houses. If Mangan's sister comes out and calls her brother to tea, everyone keeps in the shadows. The narrator always observes her closely, for he is strongly attracted to her even though he hardly knows her. The narrator’s infatuation is so intense that he fears he will never gather the courage to speak with the girl and express his feelings.

On school mornings, he waits for her to come out, then grabs his school books and follows her until their paths diverge. She is constantly in his thoughts even though they had never had a conversation. "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, murmuring: `O love! O love!' many times.“ A day comes when she speaks to him. She asks whether he is going to the Araby bazaar Saturday evening.

She herself wants to go but cannot. He tells her that if he goes to the bazaar, he will bring back something for her. Araby represents a distant, mystical land to which he will travel on behalf of his beloved to obtain for her a splendid keepsake. He is like a knight planning a quest. On Saturday morning, he reminds his uncle that he will be attending the bazaar that evening. After the narrator returns from school, he sits downstairs staring at a clock, waiting for his uncle to come home and give him money for the bazaar. Looks out at the Mangan girl's house, imagining he sees her in front of her house—her curved neck, her dress, her hand on the railing.

His uncle comes home at 9 in the evening. In a hurry, the boy leaves. The narrator takes an empty third-class train across the river to the site of the bazaar. When he walks down the street to the bazaar building, it is nearing ten o'clock. He pays his way and walks through a turnstile only to discover that most of the stalls are already closed. When the narrator finds a stall that is still open, he goes inside and looks over a display of tea sets and porcelain vases.

Does not purchase anything. “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” Disillusioned by what he finds at the bazaar, realizes that the Mangan girl probably has no romantic interest in him. Belief that she was attracted to him was a result of his vanity. Tragic story of defeat. In “Araby,” Joyce suggests that all people experience frustrated desire for love and new experiences.