The Symbols Of Loneliness In Araby By James Joyce

In the essay “Araby,” James Joyce uses a grown man looking back on his life, when he was a young man, as his narrator. Reflections on his loneliness, the oppression caused by his church and confusion about his feelings from being attracted to a girl are scattered throughout the story.
There are many references that speak of being lonely in this essay. The second sentence of the first paragraph sets the theme for the story. “An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground” (Joyce). The house was set apart from the other houses. This house symbolizes the boy set apart from his friends who were not yet experiencing feelings like he was toward Mangan’s sister. He was also being raised …show more content…
“The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree” (Joyce). Could this be the Garden of Eden with one good tree among “a few straggling bushes?” As Mangran’s sister spoke to him the first time, “she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist” (Joyce). Is the bracelet a symbol of being controlled and bound by the church, like a handcuff? She could not attend the bazaar because her convent was having a retreat. The girl had no choice between attending or not. Looking back at the end of the story, the narrator admonishes himself, like a repentant sinner, for being “a creature driven and derided by vanity” (Joyce). Being vain is a sin in the Catholic church, whose members are often controlled through guilt and threats of going to hell. “But the anomalous word ‘vanity,’ induced by a religious mindset, is the key to the story’s theme” (Coulthard). The narrator didn’t understand that he was being vain until he had grown up and looked back upon that troubled time in his life. These indoctrinated control techniques by the church further added to the confusion of the boy as he was growing into a …show more content…
It is believable that he quite possibly had never been spoken to about girls and adult feelings. The story was written over a hundred years ago and as much as things change, many things, like love, stay the same. “I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration” (Joyce). When Mangran’s sister first spoke to him he “was so confused that I did not know what to answer” and “I forgot whether I answered yes or no” (Joyce). Every morning he watched for her through his front window. “When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped” (Joyce). He just wanted to see her and be near her every chance he could. “He exhibits the proper response of one committed to love” (Mandel 51) The boy’s confusion is a typical reaction to strong feelings of love toward another person. What now seems foolish to the narrator as an adult, is just a common stage of growing