Importance of the setting in understanding the storyA successful story needs to have several components linked together in order to help the reader build up the story in their minds. The setting of a story is one of the powerful elements that are often used as a link of symbolism between the character and his life. It sets the mood for the story as well as depicts the mental state of the character's mind in consonance with the theme of the story. Araby is based on the oppression people are facing in the name of religion which causes them to have a very false perspective of reality.
Description of the setting
Araby is set in Dublin, Ireland and the story locale is a North Richmond Street that is depicted as 'blind' and quiet. The word blind is chosen to imply 'without a vision' or 'a dead end.' The house of the narrator is described as 'enclosed' and 'musty;' however the narrator in his youth was unaware of the staleness that surrounds him. All of his attention was fixed on Mangan's sister whose presence helped him escape the deadness that was surrounding him. The blindness also portrays the emotional and mental status of the narrator, and religion also plays an important role here. The street is also described as filled with religious people; the description of the boy's home and the street gives the reader a feeling of age old past and a present that smells of the dead.
The narrator mentions the boy's house where a priest had died in the drawing room indicating that religion constraints the freedom of the worshippers and is an obstacle for sexuality for the people. This is the first important connection between the plot and the setting which depicts the despair, confusion and sadness of the boy. Joyce draws comparisons between the soul of the boy and the empty house. Even though the satisfaction of the boy with his life has been confirmed in the explanation of the playful activities and the chaotic garden, all of this changes...
I chafed against the work of school." These "follies" are also seen by the boy's school master as "idleness," which juxtaposes the perceived importance of the feeling for the boy with the more rational views of outsiders. This rational view is also represented by the boy's uncle, who is reminded more than once that the boy plans to go to the bazaar. The climax of the story occurs with the boy's
Benstock notes because "Araby" is narrated in first-person "Araby," we are experiencing what life might have been like for Joyce as a young boy. The boy, while we do not know his age, is still young enough to be influenced by certain "larger than life" images of the girl and the priest. Barnhisel maintains that the narrator in this story is a "sensitive boy, searching for principles with which
" In Two Gallants, the "fine tart" (p. 58) of a woman that Corley picked up is likely a prostitute or at least a woman; or, as Jackson points out on page 43, a woman "...in low milieux" (or, she could be "an attractive girlfriend" and be know as "free with her favours"). This woman may have been an easy sexual mark, but she was more than that for Corley; she
And that includes me." It is with a Wild Sheep Chase, his third novel published in 1982, that Murakami begins to delve more into the surrealistic, dream world of the opposite sex. A girl whose unusually beautiful and super-sensitive ears confer extraordinary pleasures: "She'd shown me her ears on occasion; mostly on sexual occasions. Sex with her ears exposed was an experience I'd never previously known. When it was raining,
Other characters serve as more direct and specific symbols in the story. Mrs. Mercer, the guest of the narrator's aunt on the evening that the narrator finally manages to get to the bazaar, is one such character. She, like the narrator, has been waiting for the narrator's uncle to return, and both expected him much earlier than he eventually appears. Mrs. Mercer, in fact -- a "garrulous woman, a pawnbroker's
The following quotation, in which he leaves the bazaar empty-handed, emphasizes the fact that the narrator had egregiously deluded himself about his perceived romance. "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). The "anger" the narrator experiences is understandable and is in reaction to this dearth of money and inability to produce
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