Analysis of the Short-story Araby

Lecture 1

James Joyce

The famous Irish novelist, short story, and poet was born James Augustine Aloysius
Joyce on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland. Though he was born into a modest family, his
father managed to sent him to prestigious boarding schools namely Clongowes Wood College
and later Belvedere College where he betrayed a keen interest in languages and literature.
Attending University College in Dublin spurred his writng talent flourished and with the advent
of the modernist mouvement, he became one of the most revered writers of the twentieth
century. His masterpiece Ulysses (1922), written in three languages and with the arduous
techniques of modernist fiction, is a cornerstone in British literature and hailed as one of the
finest pieces of fiction in the world. His subsequent novel Finnegans Wake (1939) stirred much
ink on paper. Joyce is also renowned for his autobiographical novel The Portrait of the Artist
in (1916), and his collection of short stories Dubliners (1914) which catches the hum of the
everyday life in the capital Dublin. With Ulysses, Joyce perfected his stream-of-consciousness
style and became a literary celebrity. Joyce left Ireland in 1904 for Europe ; he lived in Zurich,
Trieste and Paris, but he suffered from short eyesight for most of his life and died in 1941.

About Dubliners

Most of Dubliners was written in 1905, but the manuscript was not brought out until
1914. It comprises a series of chapters in the moral history of James Joyce’s community, and
the episodes are arranged in careful progression from childhood to maturity, broadening from
private to public scope. Dubliners, faithful to its title, had no other subject than the capital of
Ireland and its inhabitants. It is an image of the history of Ireland. Joyce used a sense of exact
historical referentially in his early fiction significantly to affect readers and critics. Written in
an unvarnished language or what Joyce himself terms as a style of “scrupulous meanness”, the

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short stories aim at holding a mirror to the citizens of Dublin in the Irish capital which distills
an atmosphere of affliction, drabness, and decay. In all of these fifteen stories, Joyce depicts
the everyday life of men and women sketching them as individuals devoid of ambition and
willingness as they remain petrified and uncapable to effect a minor change in their destiny.

Historical Background

The political and religious backgrounds of the short-story Araby can easily be traced
back to the year 1800 as a convenient starting point. In that year, after centuries of English
colonization and exploitation, Ireland was made part of the United Kingdom by the Irish Act
Union. This annexation dissolved the 500-year-old Parliament and replaced it with direct rule
from London. Ironically, the chief opposition to the Act came from protestant population, partly
because there were plans for Catholic emancipation. The Catholic Church made a deal and gave
its support to the Act. An important result of this configuration was that nineteenth century Irish
Politics tended to emphasize demands for home rule, with power devolved from London, rather
than outright independence itself. The Protestants and some Catholic peasants hoped for direct
action and rebellion.

The famines of 1840, hardened passionate enmities and strengthened the need for action
though many escaped (mass immigration to the U.S.A.). The result of famine was a dramatic
decline in the widespread use of the Irish language. By the middle of the nineteenth century,
the Catholic Church was cooperating more and more with the British government. British
government made several grants for Ireland. The Catholic Church saw the way to progress
through Parliamentary means and the Catholic Relief Act 1829 sought to encourage this by
granting middle and upper-class Catholics the right to vote and take seats in Parliament. The
Church regularly and officially denounced revolutionary acts and organizations and was thus
regarded favorably by the government which permitted the further establishment of schools and
colleges.

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Biographical Context

Being deeply aware and disgusted by the actual life in Dublin, Joyce who enjoyed a
Jesuit upbringing felt the urge to detach and forsake the hindering values and traditions he has
been inculcated and turned his back to a disappointing reality which turned him into a
disillusioned man who totally lost hope in his people and the Catholic Church. He forsook his
religion and country and went into self-exile to Europe from where he never returned except
twice; once for the publication of Dubliners and once for his mother’s death, but he never
succeeded to silence his revolutionary Irish blood that dictated him the struggle against the
entrapment and paralysis of his people. In a deliberately rough and unrefined prose he seeks to
present bluntly to ‘Dubliners’ the degrading reality of their life in the aftermath of their political
disgrace. Dubliners have themselves led to the downfall of their political leader Parnell, and
Joyce never forgave them for having evinced their unique chance for freedom. He felt that
Dublin was at the heart of the paralysis of the waste land partly because of the invisible
oppression of the Roman Catholic Church and partly by the pocket-lining of small-time
politicians that forsake the Irish and the country to the British. He decried the Church’s
devastating impact on his people and their petty materialism. In a letter to the publisher of
Dubliners, Grant Richard, Joyce writes about his design to produce stories that he hopes will
shake the consciousness of Dublin’s Denizens. He declares that:

My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I

In the light of what the author of the fifteen short stories has claimed, it is of paramount
importance not to skirt the style in which these pieces of fiction have been transcribed, as it is
an essential part in the understanding of Joyce’s intentions.

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About the Short Story

Araby refers directly to an actual bazaar that visited Dublin in 1894, which was not only
a memorable local entertainment but also a series of major local annual events. Araby also
evokes the distinctive version of Irish Orientalism that looked to the East for the highest sources
of national identity and the very origins of the Irish language, alphabet, and people. Writing
both within and against the movement of the Celtic revival, Joyce defined his place within the
tradition of Irish Orientalism by writing two biographical essays on the Irish poet and Orientalist
James Clarence Mangan in 1902 and 1907, the composition of which closely bracketed and
heavily shaped the writing of Araby, as Joyce acknowledges by naming an essential character
in the story after Mangan. Joyce used a sense of exact historical referentiality in his early fiction
significantly to impact his readers.

He has been very much influenced by the poet Clarence Mangan as it shows in his short
story Araby. Stone claims that Mangan’s poem Dark Rosaleen is central to the story as it
contains the same elements of physical love and religious adoration that the boy shows for
Mangan’s sister. Then the name’s poet comes in turn to suggest : Ireland, poetry, Dark
Rosaleen, which contribute in enhancing the meaning of the short-story. Then the interpretation
of the short story is inevitably linked to Joyce’s influences.