Symbols of love and adolescence in James Joyce's "Araby" (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Literature - Modern Literature, grade: 2,7, http://www.uni-jena.de/ (Institut für Anglistik), course: Introduction to Literary Studies II, language: English, abstract: This paper will argue that James Joyce's "Araby" is a short story which contains lots of symbols for love and the process of puberty and that makes it to a love story.

In 1882 Joyce was born in Dublin. He visited a Christian school from 1888 to 1891 (Oeser 139). When he was 23 he finished the tales of "Dubliners", but they were published in 1914. (Oeser 140). "Dubliners" contains 15 tales (Oeser 67). Joyce died in 1941 in Zürich (Oeser 143).

"Araby" is the third story of the "Dubliners" (Collins 93). It is about a boy who lives in Dublin. The boy lives in an old house and he loves the girl who lives opposite the street. His behaviour can be characterized as a kind of obsession, because he observes the girl every day from his window. One day she asks him, if he goes to the bazar, which is called "Araby". A few days later he visits the bazar, but this leads to a big disappointment, because the market closes when he is there.

The story shows by using different symbols that the boy loves the girl or even more he is obsessed, but the story not a happy end and finishes with the disappoint-ment at the market. The act of disappointment is not just a tragic ending of a love story. It makes his puberty visible as well, because lots of people fell in love when they are getting older and become adolescents. It is also necessary to point out that most of these stories do not have a happy end in reality and in metafiction as well.