EWRT 1C Class

The Short Story

AGENDA Short Story Discussion: “Araby

Author Introduction: James Joyce

Historical Content

Literary Style

Questions

QHQ

JAMES JOYCE (1882-

1941)

James Joyce was born into a middle-class, Catholic family in a suburb of Dublin, on February 2, 1882.

Joyce's father, John Joyce even though he was a good-natured man, was a drinker who wasted the family's resources. The family’s prosperity dwindled, forcing them to move from their comfortable home to the unfashionable and impoverished area of North Dublin.

Nonetheless, Joyce attended a prestigious Jesuit school and went on to study philosophy and languages at University College, Dublin. He moved to Paris after graduation in 1902 to pursue medical school, but instead he turned his attention to writing.

James Joyce Age 6

In 1903 he returned to Dublin, where he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle, the following year.

From then on, Joyce made his home in other countries. From 1905 to 1915 he and Nora lived in Rome and Trieste, Italy, and from 1915 to 1919 they lived in Zurich, Switzerland. Between World War I and World War II, they lived in Paris. They returned to Zurich in 1940, where Joyce died in 1941

James Joyce Joyce regarded himself as a genius

and refused to make any compromises in his writing to achieve commercial success. His difficult personality alienated many people who came into contact with him, but he enjoyed the devotion of Nora, his brother Stanislaus, and a number of close friends and patrons who recognized and helped to nurture his exceptional talent. Since his death in Zurich in 1941, readers, critics, and scholars have continued to study his works. He is regarded today as one of the most important authors of the twentieth century and as a giant of literary modernism.

Major Works:

Dubliners 1914A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 1916Exiles and Poetry 1918Ulysses 1922Finnegan’s Wake 1938

Joyce talking with publishers Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier at Shakespeare & Co., Paris, 1920

“Araby” “Araby” is the third of the fifteen stories in Dubliners (1914).

These stories examine the hazards of the various stages in life, and “Araby” marks the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence.

James Joyce based “Araby” on his own experiences as an adolescent resident of Dublin in 1894, when Ireland was chafing under British rule.

Like the fictional narrator of “Araby,” Joyce lived on North Richmond Street (No. 17) in the central part of the city. He was also undergoing a period of self-discovery.

The climactic scene takes place in South Dublin, across the River Liffey from central Dublin, at a bazaar in a large building. Such a bazaar—billed as Araby: a Grand Oriental Fête (or as “A Grand Oriental Fête: Araby in Dublin”) was actually held in Dublin between May 14 and May 19, 1894, to benefit a local hospital. 

Historical Context As he portrays it in his work, Joyce’s Dublin was

composed mostly of lower-to middle-class residents oppressed by financial hardships, foreign political dominance, quarrelsome rival Irish nationalist groups, and the overwhelming influence of the Irish Catholic Church.

In the late 1800s, Ireland was still reeling from the agricultural disasters of mid-century and the massive Irish immigration (mainly to the United States) that followed. Consistently throughout the stories, characters agonize over a crown or even a shilling; this underscores the prevailing financial difficulties among most citizens.

Politics Ireland was ruled by the British

monarchy, which, of course, many of the Irish resented. The British government had an open hostility to both the Irish (for their general lack of education and their superstitious ways) and the Catholic Church. That the British profited from its presence in Ireland only served to further inflame the Irish at the British presence.

Charles Stewart Parnell

Charles Stewart Parnell was a political leader in the 1880s. Because of his influence, political savvy and staunch support of home rule, the achievement of Ireland’s independence seemed more likely under Parnell’s leadership than ever before. However, a romantic scandal in 1889 damaged Parnell’s reputation, allowing his opponents and groups of zealous Catholics (Parnell was Protestant), to discredit him and undermine his power base. This broke Parnell, leading to his political defeat and—ultimately—his death in 1891.

CHARLES STEWART PARNELL (1846-1891). Irish nationalist leader, on an American advertising circular of the 1880s.

The Catholic Church An overwhelming force in the Ireland of Joyce’s

period was that of the Irish Catholic Church, since a vast majority of the Irish were Catholics. According to his biographer, Richard Ellmann, Joyce believed that the “real sovereign of Ireland [was] the Pope” (Ellmann, James Joyce, 256). Although Joyce left the Church, Ellmann adds, he “continued to denounce all his life the deviousness of Papal policy,” finding the Church and the papacy “deaf” to Irish cries for help (Ellmann, James Joyce, 257).

Literary Style

The first-person point of view in "Araby" means that readers see the story through the eyes of the narrator and know what he feels and thinks. When the narrator is confused or conflicted about his feelings, then readers must figure out how the narrator really feels and why he feels that way. For example, when the narrator first describes Mangan's sister, he says that "her figure [is] defined by the light from the half-opened door.'' In other words, she is lit from behind, giving her an unearthly "glow," like an angel or supernatural being such as the Virgin Mary. Readers are left to interpret the meaning behind the narrator's words, because the boy is not sophisticated enough to understand his own desires.

Joyce is famous for using a stream-of-consciousness technique for storytelling. Although stream of consciousness does not figure prominently in "Araby,'' a reader can see the beginnings of Joyce's use of this technique, which he used extensively in his subsequent novels, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. A major feature of stream-of-consciousness storytelling is that the narration takes place inside the mind of main characters and follows their thoughts as they occur to them, whether those thoughts are complete sentences or not. Although this story uses complete sentences for its storytelling, the narration takes place inside the boy's mind. Another feature of stream-of-consciousness narration is that the narrator's thoughts are not explained for the reader. This is true of "Araby" as well, especially during and after the boy's epiphany.

Choose NEW TEAMS

1. The teams will change on or near essay due dates.

2. You must change at least 50% of your team after each project is completed.

3. You may never be on a team with the same person more than twice.

4. You may never have a new team composed of more than 50% of any prior team.

Questions for Thought

1. Identify and discuss one or more of the numerous religious symbols in the story.

2. The narrator of "Araby" moves from innocence to experience through his epiphany. What has he learned by the end of the story?

3. Write a short psychological profile of the narrator based on a passage from the story.

Identify and discuss one or more of the numerous religious symbols

in the story.

“The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes, under one of which I found the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.”

Write a short psychological profile of the narrator based on a passage

from the story.

“One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: `O love! O love!' many times.”

Psychological profile continuedAt nine o'clock I heard my uncle's latchkey in the hall door. I heard him talking to himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had received the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret these signs. When he was midway through his dinner I asked him to give me the money to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten.

--The people are in bed and after their first sleep now, he said.

I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:

--Can't you give him the money and let him go? You've kept him late enough as it is.

My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed in the old saying: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. He asked me where I was going and, when I told him a second time, he asked me did I know The Arab's Farewell to his Steed. When I left the kitchen he was about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my aunt.

The narrator of "Araby" moves from innocence to experience through his

epiphany. What has he learned by the end of the story?

“I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger. “

HOMEWORK Read “The Story of an Hour”

Post #15: Choose one Discuss Mrs. Mallard as a sympathetic

character or as a cruel and selfish character. How might your own gender, age, class or ethnicity influence your response?

Do you think Chopin's critique of the institution of marriage, as expressed by Louise, is applicable today?

Profile a character

Discuss the story through one critical lens

QHQ