[World Lit.] 3rd Reading Journal (Paragraph)

From a distance, James Joyce’s “Araby” might appear to be a realistic piece of writing that depicts maturation of an adolescent. After all, when the nameless narrator describes the setting for Dublin and Araby in detail, it seems to be even more realistic. However, on the other hand, the remarkable similarity between the visual descriptions of the two places delivers a more sophisticated message. They both portray devastatingly dark atmosphere due to the loss of faith in religion. In Dublin, North Richmond Street is “blind,” the houses stare at each other with “brown imperturbable faces,” the priest is dead, and the inhabitants are spiritually in decay. When the narrator arrives at Araby, the bazaar is not the kind of place that he has expected; two guys and a shopkeeper are flirting, and the narrator compares it to “church after the service ends,” being empty and maintaining the superficial quality without any faithful devotee. Christianity seems to be nothing holy anymore. This whole dark, insincere atmosphere not only disturbs the protagonist from the beginning, but also puts him down again at the end. James Joyce reproaches how the lack of faith in the town has “paralyzed” a young boy in his adolescence and eventually discourages him forever. Therefore, it is perhaps more accurate to assume that “Araby” has a strong quality of modernism in that it mocks the gloomy, hopeless reality and denies pretentious Christianity. In this sense, the girl in the story might be symbolizing the “light” and “hope” itself, rather than a real person that seems to be holy. The protagonist tries to protect that sacred belief he has towards that hope by achieving a quest to Araby, which at first seems to be “enchanted,” but even that place is so adulterated by impiety and hypocrisy that it actually daunts him even more. The overall story, thus, can be considered as a firm censure of the dreary reality that only bears superficiality of religion, but lacks true faith.