Joyce's Characters and Fantasy in "Araby"
Joyce's characters are lost in much of her novels, and as a modernist, she has published many stories in which they are lost. It is because of this character trait in nearly all of her stories that she has recently achieved so much fame. This prolific writer's story "Araby" is one of them.
Plot Summary
The plot is based on the teenage infatuation of a man, who also happens to be the narrator of the story. Mangan's niece, whose name is "like a call to all my foolish blood," as the storyteller remarks, speaks to this juvenile's nostalgic and profound perplexity and dream. This paper is set to reflect on the role that fantasy plays in the life of each protagonist in the play. Consequently, the paper will as well note how these actors operate within their cycles to cope with some of the experiments that come their way.
To clearly understand and state this aspect in the story, it would be substantial if to, in the first place looks at the summary of the story. The narrator, a boy who remains unknown, starts by giving a brief description of Dublin City, where his house is located. This report prepares the readers to the story by giving them the general setting in which the play takes place. As the play progresses, Mangan's sister inquires as to whether he wants to go to Araby, a Dublin bazaar. She takes note of that she cannot go to, as she has officially dedicated to going to a retreat with her school (Torchiana, 23). Having recouped from the stun of the discussion, the storyteller offers to get something from her when she is back from the bazaar. This short meeting dispatches the storyteller into a time of enthusiastic, anxious holding up and restless pressure in the reckoning of the bazaar. He cannot put together his concentration in school. He finds the lessons dreary, and they divert him from pondering Mangan's sister. This clearly shows how she is inclined to the love she has to the girl (O'brien, 18).
The Setting and Irony
On the other hand, North Richmond Street, where the boy thrives from, and it is used to give the reader the second thought of the boys world. The street is described as blind, which is to imply that it is a dead end. Additionally, the house in which the boy lives in also gives a clear picture of the inhabitants that live in the house. The narrator states that "imperturbable in the quiet, the cold, the dark muddy lanes and dark dripping gardens." This is where the first instance of situational irony is introduced. Anybody who is aware and is not blinded in any form spiritually would feel how North Richmond Street is oppressive. The general population who live there (represented by the kid's close relative and uncle) are not debilitated, but are dishonestly devout and discreetly yet profoundly smug. Their preference is sensationalized by the aunt's expectations that Araby, the bazaar the kid needs to visit, is not in for some Freemason undertaking (Fowkes, 45).
The foundation or universe of apparent deficiency stretches out from a general view of the road and its tenants to the kid's close to home connection ships. It is not an era crevice but rather a gap in the soul, in compassion and cognizant minding, that outcomes in the uncle's inability to arrive home in time for the narrator to go to the bazaar before it is closed. The uncle has doubtlessly been to the nearby bar, careless and aloof to the narrator's anguish and restlessness. The kid holds up well into the evening in the "imperturbable" house with its rancid odor and old, impractical objects that fill the rooms. The house, similar to the close relative and uncle, and like the whole neighborhood, reflects individuals who are well intentioned but limit in their perspectives and incognizant in regards to higher qualities (even the road lights lift a "weak" light to the sky). The aggregate impact of such sets in air penetrated with stagnation and disengagement (Fowkes, 45).
Fantasy and the Former Priest
Another instance in the play that shows fantasy is that of the former priest and his belongings. It shows how the rust belongings of the priest depict remnants of a more vital past. The bicycle pump corroding in the rain in the backyard and the old yellowed books in the back room demonstrate that the priest once effectively occupied with the genuine administration to God, and further, from the labels on the books, that he was a man susceptible to both devotion and flights of imagination (Torchiana, 23). The impact is to extend, through a feeling of a dead past, the profound and scholarly stagnation of the present. Into this air of otherworldly loss of motion, the boy bears, with blind expectations and sentimental dreams, his experience with first love.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this play has highlighted a number of occasions in which the protagonists in the story. It clearly shows how fantasy has played a key role in achieving the overall aim of the plot of the play. The kid's last disillusionment happens accordingly of his stiring to his general surroundings. The cheap triviality of the bazaar, which in his brain had been an "Oriental charm," strips away his visual deficiency and allows him to sit unbothered with the acknowledgment that life and love contrast from the fantasy. Araby, the typical sanctuary of affection, is profane. The bazaar is dim and discharge; it flourishes with an indistinguishable profit motive from the commercial center ("two men were tallying cash on asalver"); love is spoken to as a void, passing tease. "Araby" is an account of first love; significantly more, it is a representation of a world that challenges the perfect and the fantasy. Realizing this, the kid ventures out adulthood.
Work Cited
Fowkes, Julie E. “By the Grace of Joyce, the Brute is Freed: Brutish Bodies, Munificent Minds, and Liberating Language Within Dubliners.” (2016).
Torchiana, D. T. (2015). Backgrounds for Joyce’s Dubliners (Vol. 8). Routledge.
O’brien, Darcy. The Conscience of James Joyce. Princeton University Press, 2015.
