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A Critical Look

April 25th, 2003

by Steven Kilpatrick

Oh, By the way, my band recently cut their first studio demo and soon we’re gonna have the songs online.  We already have a cut of one of them that still needs a little mixing and another song that’s just a goof-off demo.  Check them out at www.mothuck.com/tmpmp3s.html and tell me what you think.

The following paper was written for my Short Story class at UNT in spring of 2001.  I’d like to think I’m a better writer now, but I’m probably worse at critical essays now that I’ve been away from them for so long.  Still, this was a pretty good essay, and I wrote it the morning it was due… that’s pretty much how I do all of my writing actually.  As for the grade, it got a 93 and has since been edited to fix some of the more annoying mistakes.  It was one of only three A's in the class and I was the only Freshman in a class full of Junior level English majors.  This paper obviously instilled me with a huge sense of pride because of that.  Unfortunately, like the boy in Araby, my joy was superficial and even my small victory didn’t help me pay for college.  Go Irony!

Disillusioned Epiphany

Childhood is a time when people find the simple things in life and idolize them.  People tend to spend much of their older years talking about the “good old days” as some sort of enigma.  They can never convey what it is about youth that they miss so much. Telling the same stories over and over again, they try to latch on to the parts of those stories that hold the key to their childhood.  Those who listen to the stories rarely understand the point.  The audience for such stories is usually made up of someone who has not yet gained the perspective to understand what it is that has been lost.  The item that the story tellers are trying to rediscover from their youth is quite out of reach.  It is the innocence of being a child.  It is the thought that the simple things are important.  The recurring theme in the “good old day” story is rooted in a sense of “newness” and often foolish behavior.  James Joyce tells his “good old days” stories in a different way than we are used to however.  He tells them as the child loses his sense of innocence and not in the normal sacred way that most old men will on their front porch.  Joyce’s “Araby” is one such example of a boy full of innocence and youth and how quickly he becomes disillusioned by a reality that he had never before noticed.

The reader gains his earliest indication of the boy’s delusion in the second paragraph.  He is discussing the priest whose death occurred in their drawing room.  When discussing the books: ‘I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow’ (Joyce. “Araby.”  Norton Anthology.  427-431.) the boy gives no indication of the content in the book.  He does not even give one the idea that he has read them.  His superficiality is immediately thrust in the face of the reader. This makes it evident that he judges the book on appearance rather than content.  A sentiment that is later echoed in his feelings for the girl.  When he tells of the girl he says, “I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words,” he then says in the following paragraph, “Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance.”(Joyce, 428).  He states to the reader that the girl’s image is what he is infatuated with.  He cannot know the girl’s thoughts well enough to judge her by them, because they have barely spoken.  His entire infatuation is built on the naïve idea of “love at first site” that is mostly a characteristic of children.  For adults it is almost a stigma to love for looks or appearance, but as a child it is a common occurrence.  The fact that the boy tells of his superficial love so nonchalantly is indicative of his delusion and innocence. 

The boy’s idealism is evidenced in that same paragraph.  When he describes having to travel through the crowd of people on the street, he idealizes his love for her saying, “I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.” This line not only symbolizes the boys idealism, but it insinuates worship, likening her to The Holy Grail (Gifford.  “Araby.” Joyce Annotated.  40-48.).  This worship of the girl is reinstated a few lines later when he claims, “Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises.”  This growing adoration again shows his superficiality as he likens this girl, whom with he has never spoken, to that of some religious icon.  When the girl tells him of the Bazaar he promises that if he attends he will bring her something.  This is almost as if the girl is his god and his trip to the Araby is his own quest for the Holy Grail.  His love for the girl has become a religious experience for the boy, and his thoughts become obsessed with his need to go to the Bazaar for her.  His idea that his quest for her is of elevated importance is evidenced in his actions: “I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play.”(Joyce, 429).  This serves to cement his delusion to the reader.  The boy’s idea that his superficial quest is divine and the other parts of life are “child’s play” is a supreme irony.  The reader recognizes the boy’s obsession as a fraud and the reason for that obsession as superficial, but the boy compares it to religious divinity and likens everything else to child’s play.  Joyce has given the reader plenty of evidence of delusion and he has also set the stage for the final few paragraphs of the text when the boy sees his folly.

The final evidence of the boys delusion, and the catalyst for his epiphany, are found in his interactions at the Araby.  His rash thought is shown before he even enters the Araby. He hands a shilling to a man at a turnstile, rather than take the time to find a cheaper entrance.  The shilling was half of the amount he had with him and in spending it so freely he has little left for the gift he plans to buy (Gifford, 48).  When he enters the bazaar he immediately likens it to a church: ‘I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after a service.’(Joyce, 431).   This is the first evidence that the boy is becoming disillusioned.  When he speaks of the bazaar as a church, it is not with the same divinity that he uses in earlier comparisons.  His anticipation and romantic image of the Araby is quite different than the image he is presented with upon his arrival.  Most of the stalls are closed and the lady who tried to help him did so without any passion for it.  The attitude of the weary man at the turnstile, and the bored woman at the stall, are quite the opposite of the boy’s grand ideal of the bazaar.  When he sees that no one else has the same glorious perception of the bazaar his disillusionment is almost complete.  It is evident that he has lost his sense of divinity when he can not easily remember why he came.  For something that was such a strong force in his mind to be so easily forgotten takes a very traumatic revelation.  The lights then go out and the bazaar ends before the boy ever completes his quest that sent him there in the first place.

As the lights go out both the boy and the reader share a moment of, “enlargement of consciousness and character,”(Connor. “The Indefinite Article:  Dubliners.”  James Joyce.  7-27.).    The boy finally realizes his superficial need to please someone he does not even really know:  ‘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, 431).  The entire piece has built to this one moment of clarity for the boy, and the reader.  The boy recognizes his vanity and the fact that it drives him.  He sees that not only the bazaar is built on superficiality and fraud, but so is his very reason for attending it.  For a boy who saw life as child’s play when compared to his vision of love, this is a critical revelation.  It signifies a loss of innocence that he can never regain. Joyce’s tale of a child who loses his innocence so harshly, is enough to make one yearn for their grandfather’s tales of “the good old days.”

You can expect a new paper every week for the next couple of months.  Please let me know what you think.  Also, if you’ve read the story I WELCOME and DESIRE any conflicting or assenting papers or discussion.  I always like to get a different spin on my ideas and would love to hear what you thought of and took from the same story.  I’m sure some of you British readers out there have read Joyce.

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