An Introspective Case Into James Joyce’s Araby Essay

He elegantly personifies the homes on North Richmond Street as â€Å"conscious of decent lives within them† which â€Å"gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces. † And the street itself â€Å"blind† (Joyce Pg. 328). These first few lines of the short fiction tale â€Å"Araby† indicate exactly what the story entails. What desperately awaits the reader, in James Joyce’s discovering tale of a young boy who comes to terms with his repressively strict yet illusory living environment, is a true reflection of the Authors own experiences as a Dubliner. The narration is intertwined with thoughts of escapism from a forever mundane existence which lacks form and emotional freedom. Whether the transparent symbolism, which balances this reflection, is strictly of religious reference or of purely psychological creed is not the discussion at hand. In fact, it is merely a coming of age tale with a religious undertone as Joyce never disappoints to tie his perspective on religion and life into his fiction. Araby begins by describing the town of Dublin, Ireland as quite forlorn and despairing; a place that is not necessarily filled with adventure and spontaneity, as through the narrators subjective eyes. â€Å"When we met in the street the houses had grown somber†¦towards it (the sky) the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. (Joyce Pg. 328)† With key words such as â€Å"somber† and â€Å"feeble† in the first few paragraphs alone, Joyce sets up a mood for the later plot. This description shows that the boy is not too fond of his surroundings in fact, undermining them. Traditionally this fictional plot may be best described as man verse society although, while relating Araby to Joyce we come to discover it may actually be man verses himself. The boy announces â€Å"the career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes†¦to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens† (Joyce Pg. 328). In one line alone the word â€Å"dark† becomes repetitive. Undeniably the author wishes to describe Dublin as the least of favorable places for a child’s youth. This may set up an indication into a piece of personal reference by Joyce. The boy, whose name Joyce chooses to remain anonymous, is apparently struggling with the ommunity he resides in just as Joyce had done. This struggle may be felt on a strictly psychological level; the boy feels trapped among various characters he comes into contact with throughout his daily routine; his guardians, the school master, the drunken men, bargaining women and shop boys of the market; and the English speaking girl of the bazaar. These characters all form a negative impression on his perspective of the community. The young boy recalls â€Å"my aunt hoped it was not some freemason affair† in response to his inquiry for leave to attend the Bazaar (Joyce Pg. 30). Freemasons are members of an underground brotherhood that were thought to be of extreme adversary to the ideals of the church (Griffin). During school the boy quotes â€Å"I watched my masters face pass from amiability to sternness† describing the strict, forceful education provided in Dublin (Joyce Pg 330). This may be a simple reflection of the various foes Joyce has dealt with during his time in Ireland. For example, Richard Ellman, a famous biographer of Joyce, notes that Joyce was, at one point, a slight alcoholic and had gotten in an altercation once in a bar in St. Stephens Green (Ellman 162). He also adds that while living with a man by the man of Oliver Gogarty, he was violently threatened with a pistol (Ellman 175). For Joyce, these are only a few of some of the harsh experiences living within Dublin. On the other hand, in Araby one character seems to contrast these emotions. An older, curiously mysterious girl, the sister of a close friend Mangan, seems to intrigue him in a spellbinding way. The young boy describes his first hand experience with her â€Å"Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlor watching her door†¦. I had never spoken to her†¦and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood. (Joyce Pg. 329)† It seems the narrator is emotionally dominated by obsession. With the use of the term â€Å"foolish†, he apparently openly admits of the eventual conclusion to Araby when he realizes his befriending was merely a failed attempt at escapism. However, what sparks his interest in this specific girl is of the most riveting wonder. More importantly, what compels Joyce to construct such a romantic based use of symbolism is under more precise interrogation. He is using the romantic endeavor to figuratively illustrate the narrator’s inner struggle with society. A few indications amongst the introducing paragraphs that give clues to the narrator’s feelings are made apparent as he quotes â€Å"The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. (Joyce Pg. 329)† In this line, Joyce signifies that his indifference to the Catholic culture may have been hidden as a child. â€Å"If I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration† may show his confused feelings regarding this imbalance of emotions he experienced in Ireland (Joyce Pg 329). He intends to portray a story of youthful ignorance and naive nature, rather than a tale of heartfelt admiration. He uses this plot to represent a theme that mirrors his own conclusion of Ireland; Joyce could not absorb his own creative nature as a literary artist out of such a prosaic culture as a child. It may have lacked the necessary hunger, stimulation, and curiosity he so desperately desired. In â€Å"The Years of Bloom: James Joyce†, writer John McCourt speaks of how Joyce had a furiously tempting early relationship with the Irish Roman Catholic Church (McCourt). He adds that Joyce also had an alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, which may help illustrate this inner conflict with religion and the community. His confused, indifference can be portrayed through this alter ego as it has been through the naive journey of the young narrator in Araby. As the story of Araby eventually unfolds, we learn that the young boy is deluded by his â€Å"crush. † During his first actual encounter, he learned of her involvement with a convent, which in reality would have rendered her â€Å"off the market† but the narrator disregards this important point. His vain nature causes him to continue this obsession and transcend it into the anticipation for attending the bazaar rather than facing the reality that she has vowed to the church in becoming a Nun. In fact, this transfer of obsession only shows that the stories underlying theme is not of romance but of self-love. As one critic explains the outcome â€Å"He has come to accept as just a life in which children play in joyless streets, girls cannot attend bazaars because of convent duties, old ladies collect used stamps for pious purposes, aunts mark time as â€Å"this night of Our Lord,† and even drunken uncles cannot resist moralizing. † After a chronology of events strengthens the narrators doubt and weakens his hope on winning over Mangan’s sister; he suffers from a sense of disillusion. In reference to the concluding thoughts of the narrator, as Coulthard implies, â€Å"[most commentators] omit religion from their list of disenchanting influences and regard â€Å"anguish† as the most important word in the narrator’s climactic memory of his disillusioning boyhood experience†(Coulthard). The boy reflects â€Å"Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger† (Joyce Pg. 32). This shows that the boy has not overcome but, in a sense, matured. He has learned of his mistake and has accepted his unfortunate circumstances. It has been said that Joyce traveled back and forth from Ireland to Trieste, to Rome, and then London, then finally Zurich by 1912 never to return to Ireland again (Geheber). It seems that the Narrators change of perspective throughout the tale reflects Joyce’s contrasting alter-ego and indecisive outlook of the Irish-Roman Catholic culture illustrated by his travels. This soul psychology of naive verses wise nature portrayed by the narrator’s emotional change seems to capture a piece of Joyce that has been seen throughout his confusingly indifferent feelings with his homeland and the foes he has encountered during his life. The narrator’s feelings towards the community also become more defined after his comment on a specific book discovered in the back drawing room of his home. Perhaps one of the most theme bearing points of the story, the narrator discovers three books. The first two speak of religious tolerance. â€Å"The Abbot† and â€Å"The Devout Communicator† are two stories that directly signal highly religious views of god fearing, law abiding people of extreme holiness. These are both two topics that have been known to frustrate Joyce (Geheber). An Abbot is a â€Å"superior of an abbey of monks† (Hyperdictionary) while being Devout is to be completely devoted to a pious belief (Merriam-Webster). This â€Å"Devotion† may go uncanny regarding whether the specific belief draws enormous sacrifice to livelihood. The last book, however, draws the boy’s interest; he quotes â€Å"I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow† in reference to â€Å"The Memoirs of Vidocq† (Joyce Pg. 328). The significance to Joyce and the theme of Araby provided by this single reference is intense. As Coulthard notes, â€Å"The Memoirs of Vidocq, the autobiography of a French policeman and soldier of fortune, would have provided vicarious escape from [this Catholic discipline]† (Coulthard). Eugene Francois Vidocq was a French man of the 18th century who is described as having a â€Å"mischievous nature† causing him to be â€Å"often at odds with his parents† (Fleisher). Joyce’s use of this reference in Araby has more significance than otherwise noted by the naked eye. Vidocq can also be compared to feelings of rebellion being that he ran away from home due to deceitful acts of betrayal towards his own father. â€Å"In the company of a young woman he ran off with, he traveled to various French seaports seeking passage to the ‘New World’ (Fleisher). † In the boy’s words as he describes the book as â€Å"yellow†, we notice a sense of relation to Vidocq as comparing the shade with a sense of bitterness and melancholy towards his own family and culture. Also, in a short biographical background of Joyce in â€Å"The Norton Introduction to Literature†, we learn that James Joyce had also â€Å"eloped† with a young woman Nora very similar to Vidocq’s journey of exile (Hunter Pg. 391)(Fleisher). This is merely a self-reflection by the author, who makes a strong note of incorporating his own experiences into this piece of literature. In the tale, Joyce continues to combine his own experiences living throughout Europe. It is said that immediately after graduating from the local University, as a young adventurous man, Joyce promptly fled to Paris (Ellman)(Hunter Pg. 91). Paris has always been known as a very artsy, open minded center of creativity (Walz). Descriptions of Paris in the early 20th century may draw upon one to conclude a grippingly lucid contrast to the setting so symbolically portrayed in Araby. Joyce describes the transportation during the young boys trip to the Bazaar â€Å"I strode down Buckingham street toward the station†¦I took my seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train† (Joyce Pg. 331). He goes on to describe the slow speed of the train as an â€Å"intolerable delay. This is a great example of the large contrast to the well known metro system of Paris at the time. There is no question that Joyce’s comparison of Paris to his indigenous Irish ascetic culture greatly influenced the context of his work. In reference to the popular surrealist culture arising in 20th century Paris one critic quotes â€Å"In addition to its better known literary and artistic origins, the French surrealist movement drew inspiration from currents of psychological anxiety and rebellion running through a shadowy side of mass culture, specifically in fantastic popular fiction and sensationalistic journalism† (Walz). Surrealism was a movement of writers and artists that used fantastic images to represent unconscious thoughts and dreams very similar to the display of symbolism used by Joyce in Araby. Additionally, this â€Å"psychological anxiety and rebellion† are exactly the underlying emotions felt by the narrator through out his journey toward realism. Although Joyce was not a true surrealist, many of the techniques revolving around these literary methods can be easily seen within his work â€Å"Ulysses† (Ellis-Christensen). In this novel, Joyce uses the idea of a â€Å"stream of consciousness†. Although, less apparent, these same methods and techniques of thought will begin to emerge among the lines of Araby, but in a much more figurative sense. â€Å"I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire†¦Ã¢â‚¬  expresses the Narrator speaking of desire and an inner struggle with himself. These emotions by the narrator most certainly may be shared by the author as well, which initially drove him to Paris and throughout Europe as a young scholar. As Joyce tells the story through the narrators first person perspective, views on life and religion seems to become much more metaphorical than otherwise noticed upon a single reading of the text. Additionally, in â€Å"James Joyce’s Concept of the Underthough†, Michael Harding explains Joyce’s use of existential thought in many of his works. He goes on to describe how famous Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s works on logic relating to ethical and religious points of view had a profound impact on Joyce (Harding). As Robert C. Solomon defines existentialism, it is â€Å"disorientation† or â€Å"Confusion† from a world based on planned identity and freeing ones mind to think from a non-conditioned perspective (Solomon). This idea of â€Å"freedom† which can be seen in the line â€Å"when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free† is exactly what the narrator strived for in Araby. Alone, this line summarizes Joyce’s thoughts on religion and how it intrudes on his thoughts of existentialism. Therefore, the underlying religious context of the story is only added by Joyce as a reference to illustrate a conditioned existence. As Coulthard comments â€Å"But they were â€Å"freed† into an equally grim world where not even play brought pleasure†, he shows how the entire story clarifies an entire existence of conditioning which Joyce spends many years of external influence deflecting (Coulthard). This is the basis for the theme of escapism and is directly denoted by his many years of philosophic inquiring among other European nations. The entire theme, characters, and setting within the fictional tale of Araby have a much larger than fictional significance to Joyce’s life. Each line, phrase, and reference has a greater figurative meaning that applies to his struggles throughout his confused and imbalanced maturity while in Dublin. While never sure whether to accept the Irish Roman Catholic faith and always striving for something more, Joyce reflects on himself through the narrator of Araby and essentially uses this ale as his own form of escapism. He may have seen himself as an idealist, who felt hindered and limited in his childhood endeavors. From the description of a â€Å"dark† community, to the expression of initial hopefulness, and later self deceit he provides a plot to transcend his own feelings. With the addition of a romantic, yet philosophical context, Joyce clearly shows personal attachment of his perspective on religion and life into his fiction.