Passage Analysis: Araby Essay

The second paragraph of James Jocyes Araby sets up important themes that play through out the short story. Not only does it display the boy as nave and immature, but it comments on the dark and bleak society he lives in. Both of these themes play a major factor that prompts his obsessive love relationship with Mangans sister.

The boy begins the paragraph by casually stating, The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. This off-hand remark immediately displays both inexperience and immaturity in the boy. He has clearly never had any experience with death, and the fact that a priest dying in his drawing-room has no effect on him displays clearly that. He displays further immaturity when discussing the books that the priest had left in the house. The Memoirs of Vidocq, which the boy says is his favorite of the books, concerns the memoirs of a French policeman and a master of disguise. But the boy likes it just, ..because its leaves were yellow. His superficial view of the book once again exemplifies his adolescence.

But Memoirs of Vidocq plays another role in this story about religious expectations. If the priest had such a book lying around his house, how can anyone else be expected to be pious? Although it is a seemingly religious society, the reader can catch glimpses of behavior that defies piousness, such as the boys uncles drinking habit and the gossiping of Mrs. Mercer. This is paralleled with the boys fantasy relationship with Mangans sister, which would be against all the rules of an extremely religious society.

Beyond his immaturity, Joyces syntax and imagery give a very bleak picture of Dublin during the time period. The boy describes the air in the house as, musty, from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. The imagery goes even farther when the boy describes the garden as containing, a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes under one of which I found the late tenants rusty bicycle pump. The description of the house and garden is extremely dreary, and seems to oppress the boys very spirit. The rusty bicycle pump in particular shows that the house seems to just be rotting away.

Both of these issues are factors in the boys obsession with Mangans sister. Because he is so young, and has probably ever experienced the feelings he has towards her, he misinterprets his obsession for love. Additionally, living in such a bleak environment, the boy finds solace in the one beautiful thing in his life, which is Mangans sister. He because his life is lived in such a colorless environment, he over-exemplifies Mangans beauty with images of light. For him, she is a way to escape the miserable shape It is this unhealthy obsession that eventually leads to the boys eventual epiphany that he was foolish to ever think he was in love.