Paralysis In James Joyce's Dubliners

In Dubliners, his collection of short stories, James Joyce chooses to constrict the lives of both Eveline and the young boy in “Araby” through mental and emotional paralysis. Eveline lives a painful life of toil, working herself to the bone to support her violent father. Her lover, Frank, offers her an opportunity to leave and go to Buenos Aires. Although she commits herself to leaving with him, at the docks she is paralyzed both by her attachment to better days with her family and by her reliance on Catholicism to guide her. The boy in “Araby” is paralyzed by his obsessive love for his friend Mangan’s sister, to the point where he hallucinates her in the back hall of a home. He goes to the bazaar in search of a gift for her, and leaves with the realization that his fantasy is both childish and arrogant. While both characters experience …show more content…
Joyce deliberately chooses to never use the girl’s name, objectifying her, implying the boy is more in love with the idea of Mangan’s sister than with the actual girl. He describes his feelings for her, fervently saying “her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood” (16). The protagonist is, in the end, a twelve year old boy who naively believes that his first crush is his true love. This love is what paralyzes him: he is shackled to this obsession with her, to the point that he sees his shackles as merely pretty iron bracelets. The boy goes to Araby expecting “Eastern enchantment” (17) and to find a gift worthy of his love, only to discover it is merely another market, run by English people, with run-of-the-mill vases and tea sets. He comes to understand his paralysis there, when he realizes that Mangan’s sister, like the bazaar, will never live up to his idealized fantasies. He leaves, “eyes burning with anguish and anger” (19). The realization that he has held onto a childish fantasy for so long humiliates