Araby Written by James Joyce

The short story “Araby” written by James Joyce is about a young boy living in Ireland whom is captivated by the young girl living across the street. The young girl mentions wanting to go to the bazaar, where he sees an opportunity to win her heart by going to the bazaar and bringing her back a gift. In the short story, Joyce uses light, vision, and darkness as a form of symbolism to emphasize the theme and setting. The idea of blindness with light and darkness emphasizes the shadows, darkness as a concept of confusion and hopelessness with a help of light as optimism.

The short story begins with an image of blindness, immediately setting up readers for the ongoing theme. Joyce writes, “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brother’s School set free.” (453) He continues to describe the street “An uninhabited house of two storey’s stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground” (453) The story uses the word blind to draw attention to the narrator’s isolation and immaturity. Joyce begins by specifically describing the young boy’s house where it is located at a dead-end street where the narrator lives as “blind” being alone and having an abandoned house at the blind end, set off from the other houses. Based on the narrators’ description of the other houses “gazing” at one another, the author wants to make the readers think of this house being separated from all the others, being lonely and very poor. As a reader, this does not give a good understanding why this house is so isolated from all the others. With the blindness of the street and the house, the author makes the readers understand the meaning of blindness. “The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen”. (453) Here, the blindness refers to the shade that covers the window; which functions as a way to blind Mangan’s sister from what is behind the window. It also allows the narrator to hide behind it. The character’s isolation is foreshadowing the seclusion with his friends, as he loses interest in playing with them and watches them play from the upstairs window. The narrator is also watching Mangan’s sister from the front parlour, with the blind pulled down so she cannot see him. The narrator is figuratively blinded by his infatuation with Mangan’s sister. The protagonist of the story has gone to the bazaar to buy a gift for Mangan’s sister, the young girl who he has a crush on, but is unsuccessful. He says, “The upper part of the hall was now completely dark. Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature drive by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” (457) The lights have gone out in the hall, making the character feeling blind. He is “gazing up into the darkness” (457), and at this point that is when he is unable to see what is around him. He is only able to look at himself feeling driven by vanity. The author refers blindness to act as a way of self-reflection and a sense of understanding. The last image the author leaves the readers with when the narrator’s eyes “burn with anguish and anger” (457). This passage is referring to the readers that the narrator is now feeling like he is alone in the world and his anger is blinding him on what is really important. The character eventually gives up on finding a gift for Mangan’s sister, making him feel like she will reject him. He loses sight of everything else in his life, and his friends, because he is busy fantasizing about her. The use of blindness in these passages shows the difficulty to understand the meaning that Joyce is trying to depict. Being blind can make somebody feel lonely, and can make someone look at them differently. The story ends with the readers feeling questionable about the meaning on blindness; where they cannot understand because they are left in the dark.

The story is filled with images of darkness and light. The story is told through the eyes of the boy who is naïve and stuck in a world full of darkness with the only hope of Mangan’s sister to give him a sense of happiness. Joyce uses darkness as theme to show how in the dark the young boy really was. The story begins at dusk, “when the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners”, and continues

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