Araby

James Joyce 


Short Summary of Araby 

Summary: Araby is a great creation of James Joyce which is full of dark and light sides. It is also the awakening of a boy to how different the world is compared to how he would like to see it. It is also the realization of the boy about the difference between the ideal world of his imagination and the base reality of life. In the beginning of this fiction we find that the nameless narrator of the story talks about life on North Richmond Street. The former resident of their apartment was a priest who died and at the time of his departure he kept some books, so the young boy narrator and, who is also the protagonist of this story, sometimes looks at them.  He stays with his aunt and uncle. He looked superficially pure and innocent who loves to play with his rustic friends every leisure periods.

Mangan is one of his friends, who has a beautiful sister lived with their family besides the narrator’s house. So they always go to school together. One day the boy watches her stealthily, waiting for her to leave in the mornings so that he can follow her on part of his way to school. The girl is the changing point for the boy. After his encounter with her his life has been totally changed forever.

The boy starts to lose his innocence and becomes more emotional when he observes the girl that no once names. Then he converted she is his love. All the time of the day, he thinks of her and totally loses his focus on all other things. He always memorizes that she is his pure love that he protects her from all evil intentions. He is lost in his thought and totally finds himself in strong praises of her. She cannot go there so he offers to bring her something from Araby. It seems that her image is such a huge part of his imagination he can hardly regard talking to her in person. This brings his life to a standstill until he can get this symbol of his love for her. With full of romantic notions he agrees to go and find some kind of gift for her.

The boy can think of little but the girl, the Orientalist bazaar, and the gift he will get for her. He takes permission from his uncle and aunt to go there, and for days he cannot concentrate his studies and daily activities. T last the day has come, and the boy reminds his uncle about his wishes to go to the bazaar that night. His uncle wishes that he will come back in time, before his going to market, and then he pays him money.

But at that night his uncle comes late for his business and he has also forgotten about the bazaar, and by now it is quite late. The boy depressions of being able to go at all, but finally his uncle come home. Though it is dark night then at that time the boy also pays much interest to go there, and he takes the small sum of money for the train and heads off.

At the closing time of Araby he has just arrived there. At that time only a few stalls are open. Then he examines the goods, but they are far too expensive for him. In the darkened bazaar he has trouble remembering why he is there. While watching two other boys seducing with a girl in one of the booths he understands his own game. At that time he realizes that the pure young girl he was trying to protect he also wanted to defile. After this he looks at himself in a whole new light. At that time the lights of the market are being shut off and the narrator despairs: "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."