Annotation of James Joyce’s “Araby”

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the beginning of Joyce’s story, I focused on annotating an area of the text in which the boy of the story admits to creepily watching a girl whom he has never much spoken to. Being a friend of Mangan, the girl’s brother, the boy has an innocent reason to see the girl so that he is not accused of being a weird stalker. However, the girl knows that the boy is a fool for her and thus, she uses her power over him to drive him away in one of their very few conversations and make him look like an idiot. As they briefly discuss going to Araby together, she gets herself out of going but she encourages him to go, and he even promises to bring something back for her. This is the young female dominion over the boy that I took note of.

As the boy prepares for Araby, this bizarre “luxuriated” his soul and it “cast an Eastern enchantment” over him, clearly showing that the boy expects a genuine Arabian/Eastern cultural experience (Joyce 17). Since the boy’s uncle arrives home late, the boy attends the bizarre at the very end when everything is wrapping up. While he was expecting a real Arabian experience, what he discovered was actors of a play out of acting mode. The silence he compares to that of the end of a church service, bringing to light the artificiality of church where a select group of people just suit up and put on an act to give people an experience they foolishly believe is real. Out of frustration that he was duped by the girl he was obsessed over and that he stupidly thought he would get a genuine Eastern experience, the boy stormed off wasting his money to symbolize his wasted time throughout the entire story.

 

Joyce, James. “Araby.” Dubliners. Ed. Stanley Appelbaum and Shane Weller. New York: Dover Publications, 1991. 15-19. Print.