Araby

3 Pages 752 Words

Essay
“Araby”
By: James Joyce


In the short story “Araby” by James Joyce the theme that people think they really are in love when they really have no clue what love is, is present. The boy says that he is in love with his friend’s sister yet he doesn’t know a thing about her except for her usual habits and routines that he witness’s everyday. He doesn’t even know what love is; he says he is in love because the feeling he is has inside for Mangan’s sister is new to him. James Joyce uses these different contrasts on love to show us that people really have no clue what love is and just say they are because it makes them feel less afraid of love.

The little boy in this story says he is madly in love with Mangan’s sister yet he doesn’t have the slightest clue about who she is and what she stands for. All he knows is what time she goes to school at, and that’s only because he stares at her door from the front parlour. “ 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.” He’s never said a word to her outside the usual hi, or bye but this doesn’t mean anything. He doesn’t know anything about her except for her observable daily routine. How she walks to school everyday or how she calls out for her brother when they are playing together. He knows he’s foolish for being “in love” with her because he doesn’t know a thing about her and that she’s older than him and comes from a family of higher class than his. The only time the two really talk is when she asks him if he’s going to the bazaar, but he’s too caught up in her heavenly image that he doesn’t recall what he said to her except for the fact that he was going to buy her something. In the end he goes to the bazaar and he doesn’t know what to get her. This is an indication that he doesn’t really know who she is because if he did he’d have an idea of what she’...