Response Paper on James Joyce’s “Araby”
Something interesting about “Araby”, by James Joyce, is that it usually takes the reader on an inward journey, where what is not said is usually more important than what is said directly. In this reading, the writer plays with the words turning this story into a metaphor almost in its entirety. As the story is written literally, this story would deal with a child who lives in a monotonous environment and embarks on a trip to buy a gift that promised to his platonic love. But if we read between the lines there is much more than that in this magnificent literary work. Although it does not seem so, it makes the reader inadvertently feel identified with the situation that the main character of this story goes through.
One of the emotional and captivating things about this reading is that it is about something that the human being (with his exceptions) goes through in his childhood, the discovery of the first love. The boy who leads the story is going through a transition phase, from boy to teenager, where for …show more content…
The character's feelings for this girl, Mangan's sister, is just the beginning. Joyce, with his words and his way of telling the story, discusses in an indirect way the difference between the real world and the world that the Church showed in those times. And all this from the eyes of a child. A child who is discovering new feelings and traveling for the first time without the company of an adult to bazaar in a certain way trying to understand and explain the feelings that invade. It seems to be a metaphor for the transition from child to adolescent and finally going to bazaar, that noisy and crowded place that would come to be the world of adults discovered by the main character. From teenager to adult. From a quiet street to a bustling place. From the world that knew to the real world. “Gazing up into the darkness… and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (par. 19). Simply
Something interesting about “Araby”, by James Joyce, is that it usually takes the reader on an inward journey, where what is not said is usually more important than what is said directly. In this reading, the writer plays with the words turning this story into a metaphor almost in its entirety. As the story is written literally, this story would deal with a child who lives in a monotonous environment and embarks on a trip to buy a gift that promised to his platonic love. But if we read between the lines there is much more than that in this magnificent literary work. Although it does not seem so, it makes the reader inadvertently feel identified with the situation that the main character of this story goes through.
One of the emotional and captivating things about this reading is that it is about something that the human being (with his exceptions) goes through in his childhood, the discovery of the first love. The boy who leads the story is going through a transition phase, from boy to teenager, where for …show more content…
The character's feelings for this girl, Mangan's sister, is just the beginning. Joyce, with his words and his way of telling the story, discusses in an indirect way the difference between the real world and the world that the Church showed in those times. And all this from the eyes of a child. A child who is discovering new feelings and traveling for the first time without the company of an adult to bazaar in a certain way trying to understand and explain the feelings that invade. It seems to be a metaphor for the transition from child to adolescent and finally going to bazaar, that noisy and crowded place that would come to be the world of adults discovered by the main character. From teenager to adult. From a quiet street to a bustling place. From the world that knew to the real world. “Gazing up into the darkness… and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (par. 19). Simply