Araby As a Modern Short Story

   Araby As a Modern Short Story 

 Araby deals with a matter of profound psychological interest of a young boy’s – fascination for the ideal of his life. This story is about the romantic yearnings and dreams of the boy – how he was fascinated by and drawn to Mangan’s sister and how he was haunted with the dream of Araby , an oriental fete held in Dublin between the 14th to 19th may in 1894. But Araby was for him a place of ideal beauty and romance. He felt an irresistible urge to visit it and to realize his dream. His keenness of going there was intensified when the girl asked him to visit the splendid Bazaar. And he promised to bring a gift for her.

The boy felt that to bring a gift for the girl from the dreamland of beauty and glamour would

satisfy his romantic ravings and his ego, which he had been fostering in his bosom in the midst of the stifling condition of the Dublin city . The girl was for him the very embodiment of Romance and charms and Araby became beauty incarnate. He was convinced that his search for ideal beauty there would meet for with success and his dream would be realized. He was also convinced that his love would achieve supreme fulfillment. But his visit to Araby brought him face to face with another sort of reality . The dullness and the frivolity of the place, its commercialism and conventionality destroyed his romantic illusion that he had woven about the place. His dreams were shattered. The boy felt himself derided and left the place in anguish and anger. Thus the boy’s quest for beauty is as much frustrated as man’s universal search for the ideal.

Araby is not a conventional story of character and situation. It Pays attention to the creation of

atmosphere, which is made of scenes found in Dublin – narrow street, darkness and light,

adrousashpits and stables and dirt and shabbiness. Human factories also contribute to the

creation of this unhappy atmosphere – the roughness of cottagers and the self-centered attitude of the middle class people with their miserliness and the constant attempt to maintain decency of life. The story thus centers round the boy’s endeavor to maintain his imaginative nature amidst an atmosphere of dirt, darkness and dragoness.

The plot of the story begins with the boy’s fascination for mangan’s sister. The girl urging the boy to go to Araby and his desire for bringing a gift fro her constitute the middle of the story . The end is the boy’s disenchantment (disillusionment) and failure to buy a gift for his beloved. Thus the conflict as a story arises of a clash between dreams and reality .

The art adopted in the story is epiphany . Here the story begins from ignorance and ends in

sudden discovery . In reality the story depicts a young boy’s psyche- journey from romance to

despair and disappointment.

Araby focuses on the quest for beauty which is universal and the frustration of the quest, which is also universal. The story is symbolic of human predicament – human aspiration and frustration. The symbolic tale is told against the realistic background of a city life. And the story is a fine blend of realism and romanticism. The story bears the evidence of Joyce’s masterly craft of wonderful artistic skill in dealing with the psychological problem of human life. It is a finest specimen of the modern short story.