CONTENTS

Page

Thesis Statement and Outline.................................................................................. 02

I. The Domination of Darkness ............................................................................... 03Đô Kim Ngân ..................................................................................................03-05Trân Thi Thu Hiên ..........................................................................................05-06

II. The Indifference Attitude ................................................................................... 07Lâm Thi Phương Nga ......................................................................................07-08Đao Ngoc Anh ................................................................................................08-10

III. The Bare Surroundings Together With the Empty and Slow Train ............ 11Đô Thi Hăng ....................................................................................................11-13

IV. The Unilateral Love ........................................................................................... 14Trân Đưc Minh ................................................................................................14-15Nguyên Kiêu Trang .........................................................................................15-16

Appendix: Araby by James Joyce

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Thesis statement : The short story Araby by James Joyce (1882-1941) depicts a picture which extends to us a profound impression about a gloomy, lukewarm stagnant and sultry life of Dubliners in 1890s.

OUTLINE

I. The domination of darkness throughout the story seemed to portray a gloomy life of Dubliners at that time and to foreshadow an unhappy ending.

II. The indifference attitude among the characters in the story showed a lukewarm life.

III. The bare surroundings together with the empty and slow train show us a boring and dull life without any motivation.

IV. The boy kept cherishing a unilateral love to a girl and dare not to bare his heart. To some extent, it can be seen that the people at that time seemed to be pushed down by an invisible complex which was too sultry to pursue their desires and express their feelings.

2

Araby is considered as one of the best short stories by James Joyce, a famous Irish

novelist and poem. Araby (1905), told from the perspective of a young boy, belongs

to Dubliners (1914) – the first set of James Joyce. Joyce is a very influential writer in

the avant-garde of the early 20th century. And like many famous writers in 20th

century, he did not have a smooth life. James Joyce wrote Araby in Trieste, Austria

where he lived for quite a long time feeling there was no position for him, and

frustrated with his frivolity of money, drinking habits and strained relationship with

his brother. The collection Dubliners was a portrait of life in Dublin, Ireland, at the

turn of the twentieth century. The title “Araby” is taken from the real festival which

came to Dublin in 1894 when the author was only 12 years old. Like the rest of

Dubliners, the short story "Araby" depicts a picture which extends to us a profound

impression about a gloomy, lukewarm, stagnant and sultry life of Dubliners in 1890s.

I. The domination of darkness throughout the story seemed to portray a gloomy

life of Dubliners at that time and to foreshadow an unhappy ending.

ĐÔ KIM NGÂN

The gloomy picture in the story was first portrayed through the overwhelming of

darkness from the beginning until the end.

The opening scenes of the story described the young boy’s overall view of the world.

This is a blind world. From the first sentence, we can see his gloomy background. He

lived in the street, named North Richmond in Ireland's largest city, Dublin in 1894,

which was introduced as a “blind”, “quiet street”(1). The image of an “uninhabited”

and “detached” house (2, 3) from the others in the street created an image of isolation

for this house as well as for the boy who felt alone and detached from his neighbors.

In addition, the image of the “blind end” (3) illustrated the darkness and the

somberness of the city and the citizens’ life at that time and suggested that there was

nowhere that the boy and his friends could go except for dreary houses and streets

here (3). The next sentence seemed to foreshadow the entire story. “The other houses

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of the street” gazing at one another with “brown imperturbable faces” were

“conscious of decent lives” (3- 5). The hopelessness and the dull life of the boy’s

were clearly reflected through the houses that contained the sense of the dead present

and lost past. The boy in this paragraph was as blind as his world.

In the third paragraph, the narrator described the depressing atmosphere. Darkness

continued to reappear “in the short days of winter”. “Dusk fell before we had well

eaten our dinner” (15) showed the readers the picture of a day began at dusk and

continued through the evening during this season. The domination of darkness was

emphasized by the image of pale light in this paragraph. When the night fell,

streetlights were but “feeble lanterns” (18) in the somberness of the “dark muddy

lanes”(20). The light from the kitchen windows only filled the street when boys

returned; however, the boy chose to hide in the shadow. This action made the

darkness again cover all the light which had just appeared in a short time. In the blind

and dark surroundings like this, only the boys’ games and shouts “echoed the silent

street” (19) and made the story have some breaks , but the boys must still play in

“dark muddy lanes”(20), in “dark dripping gardens” (21) near “dark odorous

stables” (22) and “ashpits” (22). The boys’ life was the same as what it was

suggested in the first paragraph. They could not go anywhere except this stagnant

city.

Scanning through the story, the readers could easily see that all the scenes in this

story often happened in the dark setting. Joyce used such setting to express his

intention when he wrote the stories “Dubliners”. He wanted to “write a chapter in the

moral history” of his country and he chose Dublin city for the scene “because that

city seemed to me the centre of paralysis”(The Archetypal Myth of the Quest in J.

Joyce's "Araby" written by Mahmood Azizi, para. 4, line 6). Actually, choosing the

gloomy setting to be the home of the young boy, Joyce made the boy’s life

particularly and the Dubliners’ lives generally become more vivid at the time of

1900s.

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The domination of darkness in the “Araby” represented the stagnation and isolation

of the young boy in Dublin as well as Dubliners at that time, and predicted the

unhappy endings of the young boy’s life. By using dark and gloomy references,

Joyce expressed vividly the depressing atmosphere in the bleak city.

TRÂN THI THU HIÊN

Although darkness dominated throughout the story, and in this darkness we predicted

that nothing happy would happen, the boy still kept a hope for going to Araby

despite of late time and slow train. Araby was a bazaar happened during 14 th to 19th

May 1894. Why he kept that hope? With the hope bringing back a present for

Mangan’s sister, the girl he loved, he went through the darkness to go to this bazaar.

In the boy’s hope: Araby would be a place of light and it would still open. Darkness

appeared everywhere, so in this situation if light appeared it would be very

meaningful because if there was no light, Araby would completely close.

The experiences of the boy in "Araby" of James Joyce show us that life sometimes

does not happen as people expect. The author‘s use of dark made the boy's reality of

living in the gloomy town of Araby more vivid. Darkness dominated throughout the

story while pale light just appeared at some places, and Araby, the destination of

story and also the destination of the boy was completely full of darkness at the end.

When he came to Araby, “greater part of the hall was in darkness” (135). Once again

darkness encroached and it was likely that the hope of the boy would disappear. In

this bloomy scenery, light still appeared, and it created some small hope for the boy

of having something as a present for Mangan’s sister: “A few people were gathered

about the stalls which were still open. Before a curtain, over which the words Café

Chantant were written in coloured lamps, two men were counting money on a salver”

(136, 137, 138, and 139).

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Despite of how hard he tried to get there, he came back with nothing in his hand

except for darkness, which totally covered Araby “The upper part of the hall was

now completely dark” (161 and 162). It means that at that time accordance with

completely domination of darkness, lights totally disappeared. He came back

disappointedly: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and

derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (163 and 164). This

was the time when the boy realized that life was not as good as what he had dreamed.

Reading the story, through the way the author describes the surroundings we can see

darkness appeared through the story. The boy’s life plunged in dark, the hope still

had but disappeared at the end of the story. The boy who was at the age of teenager,

the most beautiful period of human’s life, but in his eyes life was full of darkness. At

the beginning of the story we forecast that there was nothing happy at the end of the

story, and it was true. When life has nothing happy, scenery surrounding them is also

unhappy. It was also a gloomy life of people in Dublin at that time when there was a

terrible poverty in Dublin (http://www.localhistories.org/dublin.html, A brief history

of Dublin, Ireland by Tim Lambert, Dublin in the 19 th century, the first paragraph).

Life is not as good as what they expect, what bring them disappointed feeling.

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II. The indifference attitude among the characters in the story showed a lukewarm

life.

LÂM THI PHƯƠNG NGA

Dubliners’ life at that time seemed to be rather lukewarm through the indifferent

attitude among the characters in the story. The indifference appeared not only among

people of different families, but also among those of the same one.

Right at the beginning of the story, James Joyce gave readers a feeling of unconcern

by mentioning “brown imperturbable faces” (4 and 5) of houses on the street.

Reading the story, the sense of unconcern gradually grew. Mangan’s sister, after

“every morning” (33) the boy followed and passed her, should have figured out that

he had special feelings to her. Yet, she did almost nothing to reply his heart, except

for saying a few words “at last” (60).

The indifference among people got stronger when the boy went to the market on

Saturday evenings, together with his aunt. The market was such a mess with drunken

man jostling, women bargaining, laborers cursing, and shop-boys shrilling. All these

people made the boy felt as if he had got into a “throng of foes” (47), where

everyone kept doing what they wanted and just ignored others.

The indifference hurt the boy even more when his uncle came back home late at the

night of Araby. The boy first informed his uncle about his travel to Araby on a

Saturday night-on weekend night when his uncle was free from work. One week

later, on Saturday morning, the boy seriously reminded his uncle that he “wished to

go to the bazaar in the evening” (85). Responding to the boy’s sincere request, his

uncle got upset -“fussing at the hallstand” (86), and answered without any

enthusiasm - “Yes, boy, I know!” (88).

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The uncle’s reaction left him in such a mood. He “felt the house in bad humor” (90),

he found the air “pitilessly raw” (90). And, already, his heart “misgave” (91) him.

The boy had informed and reminded his uncle about the bazaar, but he still forgot

and returned home late, let the boy wait in vain for so long. Some days ago, “at last”

(60) Mangan’s sister spoke to him; and this time, finally his uncle came home. “He

had forgotten” (112). And then he refused to give the boy money by saying “The

people are in bed and after their first sleep now” (113). He just said sorry to the boy

after the boy got upset -“I did not smile” (114), and his wife said to him

energetically-“Can’t you give him the money and let him go? You’ve kept him late

enough as it is.” (115).

The uncle remembered nothing about the boy’s sincere request and asked once again

where he was going. Then the boy had to answer two times before getting a florin.

He could have given money to his nephew sooner. He simply did not care!

The indifference continued when the boy came to Araby. There were only a few

people in the bazaar, though it was a charity one. And the indifference got its climax

when the lady at the stall served him as if she was doing something she did not want

to, with a discouraging voice, rather than with warm hospitality as often seen in a

charity bazaar. At that time, the boy could not bear it anymore, and just gave up in

anger.

ĐAO NGOC ANH

The indifference attitude among the characters in the story showed a lukewarm life

in Dublin. The young boy’s life in the society where the people only care for

individual’s thought and benefit. The relationships between the boy and his uncle,

the boy and the girl Mangan, the boy and the saleswoman make an impression of

indifference and lukewarmth to the reader.8

Firstly, James Joyce puts the boy in a house with non-parent people, with his uncle

and aunt. The reader cannot know why the boy does not live with his parents,

anyway, from the beginning, the reader can have a feeling of totally unhappy life

with full treatment. In reality, even living with true parents, the child can be ill-

treated and not enough interest. A boy in the age of new feeling and desire, the age

of breaking everything without thinking and full of youth’s energy- need have more

cares from family’s member. Unfortunately, this is not a biological mother and

father, as in other societies, it is really not easy to take care of somebody who is not

“true” child. They are the people who can feed you, spending your tuition or buying

you some new clothes. However, they will not the person who sit beside you,

sympathize, encourage and ask you that “Are you ok?”. The lukewarm atmosphere

not only exists outside but inside home. Because of so many things which they have

to do, sometimes, they do not have time to think of anybody except themselves. It is

exactly real life but anything else suppresses the feeling and interest among the

people in society. The lukewarmth of society spread into each house, it makes the

connection loose, the people mostly live for themselves, think of what they want, talk

about themselves and ignore what the others think.

Secondly, James gave him a love. Love is wonderful thing but sometimes, it

becomes a pragmatic one with indifference. A question left in the reader’s mind

about the young boy’s love is whether his love is “love” or temporary indulgence,

whether Mangan, the girl he loves, talks with him because of love or she just takes

advantage of the young boy’s naivety, teases him for a gift. Her indifferent attitude to

him is because she is shy, she does not like him or she makes for herself a haughty

cover? The reader cannot find out it. Overall, we only see that the girl has not ever

interested in the boy’s love, even one time. There is not the reason that she does not

know it, her attitude and her behavior show that she knows, however she seemed to

ignore it as child’s play. That indifferent attitude unintentionally makes the boy fall

deeply in her love. One more time, we can realize a truth that, the more love the boy

gives, the more lukewarmth he receives, the lukewarmth of surrounding people.

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Finally, James lets the readers feel the lukewarmth of Dublin society which is

portrayed through the saleswoman. The boy should have welcomed by the seller

when going to Araby. On the contrary, nothing happened. There is no warm

welcome; there is no smile. It is not similar with the way sellers often do. There is

not because the salesgirl does not have that goods or need sell goods, it simply is just

contempt! Because the boy seems too young and no money! Although no one wants

to welcome a child with a few shilling in hand, yet, oh my God! It is just a charitable

bazaar! So, if it exactly is a charitable one, it seems to care for money rather than

charity! It is very funny and bitter as well! The young boy in “Araby”, as well as the

author-James Joyce- spent his childhood in a stuffy society and a restricted colonial

culture of Ireland. James Joyce had declared in a letter “My intention was to write a

chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because

that city seemed to me the center of paralysis”.

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III. The bare surroundings together with the empty and slow train show us a boring

and dull life without any motivation.

ĐÔ THI HĂNG

In the picture that James Joyce depicts, besides the darkness and the indifference of

characters, the author impresses us with a deserted and quiet surroundings which

make readers feel of a dull life without any motivation of the main character in this

story. To some extent, this picture also partly reflects the author’s thought about the

Dubliners’ life when the author was not in Dublin at that time. Remembering a little

bit about the situation when James Joyce wrote his masterpiece “Dubliners”

(“Araby” is one of the first short stories in “Dubliners”), he was not in Dublin. That

is the time after his mother’s death and also this period (from 1904 to 1914) is the

time of political violence and instability in Dublin. In addition, the conflict between

Catholics and Protestants was at its peak. Being away from Dublin gave James Joyce

an objective view about the city and its residents.

The author represents the bare and silent surroundings in his picture through three

images. Firstly, we discover the empty image of the street where the main character

of this short story lives at. At the beginning of the story, James Joyce describes

“North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street…” (1). It shows that this

street has nothing salient. It sinks into silence and if we don’t pay attention, we won’t

know the existing of this street. Continuing discovering this street, we see “An

uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors

in a square ground. The other houses of the street…gazed at one another with brown

imperturbable faces.” (2-5). There is no people’s voice, all we see and feel is the

houses are standing calmly and “looking” at each other. The life in a street is not so

different with the life in a remote and poor countryside. Through adjectives that the

author used such as “blind”, “quiet”, “uninhabited”, “square”, “brown”, and

“imperturbable”, he presents a world that is simple but quite humdrum. Clearly, this

picture shows the author’s outlook about a real life in his native city, a boring life.11

The second image that James Joyce used to depict a deserted picture of life is the

image of a slow and empty train going to bazaar. This train doesn’t put on it a hurried

and crowded look as we think. In contrast, it contains something make us

disappointed. The young boy in this story had a very long day of nervousness and

waiting for money from his uncle to go to bazaar and after receiving money in

angrily mood, he quickly strode towards the station. However, in opposition to the

eagerness of the boy, the author sketches an intolerable delay of the train and it

makes both the main character and readers feel unbearable. “I took my seat in a third-

class carriage of a deserted train. After an intolerable delay, the train moved out of

the station slowly. It crept onward among ruinous houses…” (124-126). Although

this is “a special train for bazaar” (128), it is a deserted train; no one except the boy

is in this train. This train delayed unbearably, but a carriage just has only one guest.

The train run slowly, it seems utterly exhausted and sad in the dark night. There are

no guests to carry; the train has no motivation to start its trip. Also, the life of

Dubliners at that time is full of class struggle and religious conflict., so people’s life

is full of tiredness and has nothing that motivate them to go ahead.

The third and also the last image is the silent a somber of Araby. In the imagination

of Mangan’s sister and the young boy, Araby is “a large building which displayed the

magical name” (131) and brims over with light. Nevertheless, when the boy stands in

front of Bazaar, he sees “Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the

hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after a

service.” (134-136) and “A few people were gathered around the stalls which were

still open.” (137). Any one of us when hearing about the bazaar, we usually think that

there are a lot of people there and perhaps it lasts all night. However, it’s quite

different in this picture; just have some people in a large building and it sinks deeply

into darkness and emptiness. The bazaar now looks like the silence of a church after

everyone leaves. Although it has the appearance of people in the third image and

they are arguing something, there is no animation here and it gives the young boy a

feeling of despair and painfulness. When all stalls are closed and Araby is filled with

darkness, it’s time the boy realizes that his real life is not as beautiful as his dream.

12

Now in the dark night the young boy doesn’t know what he should do next.

Hopelessness is one word that used to describe not only the emotion of the boy, also

the general mood of Dubliners. James Joyce, by using his own words, implies a

boring and somber life of Dubliners that he felt when he lived far away from his

native city.

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IV. The boy kept cherishing a unilateral love to a girl and dare not to bare his heart.

To some extent, it can be seen that the people at that time seemed to be pushed down

by an invisible complex which was too sultry to pursue their desires and express their

feelings.

TRÂN ĐƯC MINH

The girl whom he had a crush on was the sister of his friend who came at the

doorstep to call her brother. The boy fell for the girl. She became the light that

contrasted the dark and gloomy mood that surrounded him. He thought of her even in

the oddest places like the market or in the classroom. She seemed to be a wonderful

escape from the harsh and depressing realities that confront him.

Every morning he would peek through the crack in the parlor to watch the girl next

door leave the house and walk to school. He followed her but never spoke. He

worshiped and desired her. His eyes were “often full of tears” (48). He cried “O love!

O love!” (59) in prayer to express his great love.

It is clear that the boy in Araby was passive, inactive and reflective about his passion.

The focus was on himself and how he felt about his friend’s sister. He was more

aware of what he was doing. In addition, the boy’s pride which took over his feelings

for the girl was destructive and almost destroyed him. The girl had a negative

influence on him as she occupied his mind taking him away from his sleep and

school work. She haunted his him even he was not around her. The boy, then, learned

something about himself. He learned that his love for the girl was one-sided, unreal

and its only basis was in his feelings. It was not a mutual feeling and therefore may

have destroyed what he felt for her.

In addition, the initiation, which the boy had to experience, should also be taken into

account. The type of initiation the main character had was a sad journey from

innocence to knowledge and experience. The narrator had different attitudes and

reactions to the initiation experience. The reader learns of the boy’s initiation in the

final sentence: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and

14

derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” (163) The character

had a negative reaction to his new awareness. His realization caused him to have

feelings of shame, anguish and anger. He was controlled by his passion for Mangan’s

older sister. His ideals of the girl were not realistic but were fruitless and vain. The

girl drew out feelings in him, and he discovered that feelings must be reciprocated

and the negative side that love can also be painful. He had a difficult time accepting

his own weakness. He was in distress because he had stopped for a moment and

gazed up into the darkness and realized that his previous feelings were wonderful but

the only reality existed in his feelings. It had no existence beyond how he felt and the

understanding of this was painful for the character.

NGUYÊN KIÊU TRANG

From the very beginning of the story we get to know that the boy has a secret

adoration for a girl. She is the sister of his friend Mangan. The boy nourishes a very

deep and pure passion for his dream girl. He waits every day to have a glimpse of the

girl. But the boy never gets the chance to speak with his lady-love because his

infatuation is so intense that he fears he will never gather the courage to speak with

the girl and express his feelings. He always carries the image of the girl. He thinks

about her when he accompanies his aunt to do food shopping on Saturday evening in

the busy marketplace and when he sits in the back room of his house alone. He

places himself in the front room of his house so he can see her leave her house, and

then he rushes out to walk behind her quietly until finally passing her He cannot

forget her name for a moment. He describes his condition in the following words: "I

imagined that I bore the chalice safely through a throng of foes" (46).

With various symbolic characters, James Joyce creates the real world. In real world,

each and every person has to face the inevitable frustration, displeasure,

disappointment and realization about love and reality. This is the truth and universal.

"Araby is about dream, happiness, realism, darkness and drab world”. In “Araby”,

the allure of new love and distant places combines with the familiarity of everyday

15

hard work, with frustrating consequences. Mangan’s sister embodies this

combination, since she is part of the familiar surroundings of the narrator’s street as

well as the exotic promise of the bazaar. Like the bazaar that offers experiences that

differ from everyday Dublin, Mangan’s sister inspire the narrator with new feelings

of joy and elation. His love for her, however, must compete with the dullness of

schoolwork, his uncle’s lateness, and the Dublin trains. Though he promises

Mangan’s sister that he will go to Araby and purchase a gift for her, these mundane

realities erode his plans and ultimately end his desires. As the bazaar closes down, he

realizes that Mangan’s sister will fail his expectations as well, and that his desire for

her is actually only a vain wish for change. Moreover, his love for the young girl is

just his limitations and all of his actions and love are unilateral. Fortunately, he is

young and obviously his new conception of reality will allow him to repair what he is

doing wrong: “Gazing up into darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided

by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (164). The young boy’s

failure at the bazaar suggests that fulfillment and satisfaction remain foreign to

Dubliners, even in the most unusual events of the city like an annual bazaar.

Through the short story “Araby” written by James Joyce, we can imagine a picture

about life of a young boy who was submerged in darkness, stagnancy and a unilateral

love. From life and way of thinking of a young boy, James Joyce has a clever

purpose that he wants readers to draw from the story, that is gloomy and sultry life

without motivation of Dubliners in 1890s. To some extent, it can be seen that the

people at that time seemed to be pushed down by an invisible complex which was

too sultry to pursue their desires and express their feelings. Especially, Mangan’s

sister symbolizes the unreachable dream the people of England had during the tough

times and it can be seen further as individualism and isolation. Generally speaking,

The English novelist James Joyce is famous for his research into basic human

behavior and strong insight into the natural activities that make a man. As an author

he has presented his perception of social limitation and shows how those limitations

are against the freedom of self-expression. He characteristically fights against the

traditional notions to set a new trend of thought in his literary works.

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