JAMES JOYCE ' S ARABY - A STORY OF VIVID WAITING
Araby, the duration of Joyce ' s story is associated with the grand oriental mingle, to blame in Dublin, in May 1894. Inveigh the background of Araby, because a haunting place for romance and rouse for the childmind, the story expresses Joyce ' s immaturity craving for an ideal delicacy in the drab surroundings of Dublin. However when the boy in the story who craves to stopover Araby, just visits it there is great lamentation in store for him. Therefore consequent a affair of vivid waiting for the ideal represented by Araby there is a frustration of the nonpareil.
Consequently the matter of Araby is symbolic. Araby was an nonpareil of life, an epitome of romance and fairness to the young author. This is represented through the burning desire of the boy to visitation Araby lost in the gloomy intercourse of material life. Araby is the symbol for romance and allure. The boy ' s pungent desire to stopover the spree is man ' s craving for the nonpareil. His lamentation represents the frustration of an prototype in the hard surroundings of substantiality locality romance cannot keep on. The adolescent conception is forever in search for beauty but is frustrated.
The boy hero of the story lived in a blind street of North Richmond Street, a dark, blocked dreary street with unattractive houses. The house he lived in was a decaying musty house with a dry garden at the back. The sky above the street was dark and the lamps were dim. There was no brightness. The general air was one of darkness with dark muddy lanes behind the houses, dark dripping gardens, ashpits, dark odorous stables, with light from the kitchen windows filling the streets. In this atmosphere of drudhery and dreariness the adolescent boy ' s romantic heart craved for the sight of Mangan ' s sister. Every morning the boy hero lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind used to be pulled down. When she opened the door he would run to the hall, seize his books and follow her. He would keep her figure fixed in his eyes and when their roads diverged he would pass her. Thus the boy ' s life was a story of intense waiting and expectation for the sight of Mangan ' s sister.
Joyce describes the drudgery and ugliness of the market surroundings he went through every weekend only to emphasise that like a knight or a devotee he bore her name as a chalice through a throng of foes. Finally one day Mangan ' s sister spoke to him asking him to bring back a gift from the oriental fete of Araby. While this was the end of one long wait for her to speak to him this was the beginning of another intense wait of going to the bazaar since the boy promised Mangan ' s sister to bring back something from the fair. He wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days, revolted against school work and Araby with all its eastern enchantment became a destination of utmost importance to him. He asked leave of his aunt to go and visit the fair. He had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which stood between him and his desire and seemed like child ' s play. On the important Saturday morning he reminded his uncle he was going to Araby. But when he had come home to dinner his uncle had not yet come home. The boy sat staring at the clock and there began a long immense wait for his uncle. He went roaming and singing from room to room, spent about an hour watching the house of Mangan ' s sister, withstood Mrs. Mercer ' s gossip and still his uncle did not return. An immensely important errand on which he was put by the woman he lived for was not going to be performed. Finally he returned at nine o ' clock. It was that late that the boy started out for Araby, his desire for the last few days.
However at the bazaar he met with great disappointment. He found it almost closed. A young lady at a stall was talking and laughing coarsely with a young man. Observing her she asked in a discouraging tone if he wanted to buy something. There was no air of fancy in the atmosphere. It was a realistic atmosphere with no exoticism in it. There was nothing different from the drudgery of North Richmond Street. This is the moment of epiphany for the boy. Epiphany is a technique of self realization Joyce uses. He realizes the folly of trying to transcend his own existence into a world of eastern charm. His eyes burned with anger at having lost an ideal that he had waited so intensely for. The vividness of the wait is reinforced in the feeling of anger that comes out of frustrated ideal.
Thus Araby contains the author ' s expectation for the relish of beauty that he had long dreamt. His eager watching for Mangan ' s sister or waiting for a slight view of her is all marked with an idealistic yearning and a romantic sensation. Her desire to go to Araby which, to her imagination is a splendid bazaar, and his promise o go there and to bring some gift for her, all when symbolically interpreted, sharply indicate the long human expectations and aspirations for the ideal. Indeed Araby and Mangan ' s sister gleamed before the boy hero like the Holy Grail of the Grail Legend which had prompted chivalrous knights to undertake perilous journeys. The reference to the Holy Grail has a symbolic significance. The author ' s boyhood mind was fascinated by his own ideal of romance and beauty. Like the medieval knight he waited for what he could not possess or relish. The story records the longing, lingering, waiting for the unattainable ideal of life. The desire for visiting Araby depicts the quest for beauty of the mind pinned down by the grim reality of a commercial world. The boy waits for it with an intensity that is tragically shattered.
