Preview

Araby Theme Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
265 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Araby Theme Essay
James Joyce’s short story, Araby, focuses on a young boy who becomes obsessed with attending the Araby bazaar in order to find a gift for a girl he likes. I believe one of the story’s underlying themes is the power of coveting. For example, the boy narrator says, “ I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood” (Joyce, n.d., para. 4). It is clear from this passage the boy fantasizes the idea of being with Mangan’s sister, yet he has never made a true gesture to get to know her. It is also possible the boy is using the fantasy of the girl to distract him from his somber condition. His entire world is dark, and she is an exotic brown-skinned diversion from his reality (Joyce,
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Ccot Essay Example Middle East
    • 370 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Ccot Essay Example Middle East

    Like many parts of the world the Middle East experienced different changes and continuities during the pre classical period. While political structure changed in the Middle East from 10,000 to 600 B.C.E, class structure remained the same.…

    • 370 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Comparing Araby And A & P
    • 161 Words
    • 1 Page

    Comparing Araby And A & P

    In “A&P” by John Updike, the narrator Sammy struggles for freedom. He fantasizes of breaking free from working in the A&P. He became smitten when he encounter with a girl he calls Queenie, she becomes a symbol that represents his longing desires in which he sees an opportunity to escape through her. On the other hand James Joyce in “Araby,” the young adolescent narrator is always alienated in darkness so he seeks for a "light," in which, he sees it in Mangan’s sister. He instantly became captivated with her, ultimately thinking by going to the Bazaar to give her a gift will grant a secure relationship between them. Despite the differences both narrators cannot identify between reality and fiction. The role of romance comes in to play when…

    • 161 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Arabia 550-600 Essay
    • 433 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Arabia 550-600 Essay

    In the years 550 - 600 there was political disorder in Arabia and communication routes were not safe to use. Religions were different in every kingdom across Arabia and was a large cause of this crisis. Judaism was the dominant religion of Himyarite Kingdom, while Christianity became the official religion in the Persian Gulf. While much of Arabia believed in more than one god (polytheism), there was want for a more spiritual religion. Most did not want to be converted to a foreign faith, but those faiths gave reference points, and the old vocabulary of Arabic was replaced by Jewish and Christian loanwords. These words are usually adopted from another language with very few changes. On the day before the Islamic era, Quraysh was the leading tribe of Mecca. They were also a very strong force in Arabia at the time. To ensure that anarchy was avoided, they had "sacred months". In these months, violence was not allowed and travel was safe for everyone. The shrine in Mecca and the surrounding area…

    • 433 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Judith Beveridge Poem Essay
    • 647 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Judith Beveridge Poem Essay

    This essay discusses the value and merit of Judith Beveridge's poems "Domesticity of Giraffes" and "Fox in a tree stump" and describes how each poem clarifies the value of life.…

    • 647 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    A Comparison of Araby and Wild Berry Blue
    • 1249 Words
    • 4 Pages

    A Comparison of Araby and Wild Berry Blue

    Araby 's protagonist feels insignificant, as he is ignored in his requests to his uncle and treated as unimportant from his aunt. A hopeless desire arises in him as he glorifies his friend 's sister and it becomes his sole focus in life. His education suffers with a disinterest in class as he “...chafed against school”, and his Master hoped “...he was not beginning to idle”, as his attention span drifted from the pages he “...strove to read”.…

    • 1249 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Araby: The Narrator's Dissapointment In Love
    • 249 Words
    • 1 Page

    Araby: The Narrator's Dissapointment In Love

    The main idea in the short story "Araby" is about the narrator's dissapointment in love. The story begins about a young boy who is in love with his friend and neighbor Mangan's older sister, who he secretly watches from time to time. When the older girl mentions to him that she wishes she could make it to the bazzar, he is surprised that the girl has spoken to him for the first time, and promises that he will bring her back a gift. Impatiently he begins to stop paying attention during school and becomes distracted with everything around him only thinking about the gift up until the day of the Araby. Upset and angry, he paces back and forth waiting for his uncle to bring him money but he arrives home late. By the time the young boy got to the…

    • 249 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Araby vs. Macbeth
    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Araby vs. Macbeth

    In the short story Araby, Joyce shows how a young boy develops a crush on Mangan's sister, a girl who lives next door. It all begins when Mangan's sister asked him if he planned on attending the bazaar known as Araby. The girl then explains that she will be away on a retreat when the bazaar is held and therefore unable to make it. The boy promises her that if he goes, he will buy her something. With the permission of his aunt and uncle, the boy was ecstatic. As the night arose, his uncle was nowhere to be found. After waiting a long time for his uncle to get home, he finally receives money for the bazaar. By the time the boy arrives to Araby, its too late. The event was shutting down for the night, and he didn't have enough money to buy Mangan's sister something nice like he promised. The boy left disappointed and heartbroken. The theme in the classic story of Araby can compare to the legendary play known as Macbeth.…

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    araby and the things they carried
    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages

    araby and the things they carried

    Cited: Kelly, Joseph. The Seagull Reader - Stories. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008. 354-72. Print.…

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Araby Questions
    • 712 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Araby Questions

    How is the attention he pays to the girl different from that of Sammy in “A& P”? I don’t the attention that he pays to her is any different than what Sammy does in the A&P. She doesn’t even know that he is watching or paying any attention to her at all.…

    • 712 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Araby Questions
    • 769 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Araby Questions

    6. The girl intoxicates the narrator because she is something that is different from the boring, dull life of Dublin. She does nothing to advance these feelings, all she does is talk about the bazaar that is happening, and this fills the narrator’s mind with ideas of the magnificent east and give the narrator feelings that he doesn’t normally experience. He sees something that he doesn’t see everyday, something that contrasts with the dull reality of Dublin.…

    • 769 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Themes Of Our Araby
    • 1453 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Themes Of Our Araby

    The car plunged from sun drenched desert into tall, dark palms. Into a different world. Inside, the road softened to a track that wound and bumped its way forward over sandy, unimproved soil, shielded from the sun’s glare by walls of greenery. That is, the track came about as close as any vehicleway can to being in harmony with earth and vegetation. But before long it ended; just petered out. A few yards ahead, nestling so naturally among the palms that at first my eye hardly registered it, stood a thatched-roof cabin. Or perhaps the right word is “shanty.” For the place had a definite South Sea Island air. The big stars-and-stripes hanging from a flagpole seemed almost colonial.…

    • 1453 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Literary Analysis of Araby
    • 1519 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Literary Analysis of Araby

    The setting of Araby is described within the first three small paragraphs; it conveys very vivid imagery as you would see it in the eyes of a young boy, noticing details of colors and textures of his surroundings. You soon get a sense of the narrator’s simple minded thinking as he is only a young boy. Going into the adolescent years, the narrator experiences new emotions and finds himself an immense love interest in his friend’s sister who lives down the street. As he spends much of his time admiring him from a far, he finally speaks with her. After speaking with her he is filled with so much excitement that he finds the things had once found exciting are now boring and unsatisfying, the narrator tells us, “I watched my master's face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play.”(42). This portrays the future struggles he will encounter as he starts to lose his innocence through experience.…

    • 1519 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Sunni Conflict Essay
    • 610 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Sunni Conflict Essay

    The Sunni Shia conflict started 1,400 years ago, yet the magnitude of the conflicts have not necessarily lowered. In fact, the conflict between Sunnis and Shias continues to influence the many current events that impact the middle east today. This schism was a major cause of the Saudi Arabia and Iran Cold War, the conflict even even has got the US tied into things which has caused more tension than ever, and finally the split has started the well known terrorist organizations,ISIS.…

    • 610 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Persuasive Essay On Syrians
    • 1728 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Persuasive Essay On Syrians

    The specter of ISIS and the oppressive Assad regime have ravaged Syria’s cities and forced millions of citizens to flee the country. Now, as masses of newly-minted refugees search for a new home, our country’s leaders are debating how to respond. The United States has historically been a refuge for the oppressed, a haven for Emma Lazarus’s “huddled masses” to turn to in times of trouble. These huddled masses, however, hail from a land so synonymous with terrorism that it has been dubbed a “factory of terror” (Hollande, qt. by Mann). And with the nation’s fear of another terrorist attack polling higher than at any point in the last 14 years, politicians are wary of opening the gates (Sussman and Martin). They face a tricky balancing act: how…

    • 1728 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Ames Joyce’s Short Story Araby
    • 1012 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Ames Joyce’s Short Story Araby

    In James Joyce’s short story Araby he is successful in creating an intense narrative. He does this in such a way that he enables the reader to feel what it is actually like to live in Dublin at the turn of the century when the Catholic Church had an enormous amount of authority over Dubliner’s. The reader is able to feel the narrators exhausting struggle to escape this influence of the Catholic Church by replacing it with a materialistic driven love for a girl.…

    • 1012 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics