While James Joyce’s “Araby” tells the story of unrealized childhood infatuation, it also challenges us to consider what events sabotage belief in fanciful dreams. Our narrator’s Dublin childhood is void of much optimism with “the late tenant’s rusty bicycle-pump” (paragraph 3) underneath a tree in the yard and the streets “jostled by drunken men” (paragraph 5) when he accompanies his Aunt to the market. He has boyhood friends, but lives with his Aunt and Uncle, hinting at earlier childhood trauma. He is completely obsessed with his friend Mangan’s sister – “my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like finger running upon the wires” (paragraph 5) – and consequently decides to attend the bazaar Araby and buy her a gift there.
