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Focused Interpretation- “Araby”

The story “Araby” taken from James Joyce’s Dubliners is essentially about a young boy who is youthfully blind to the environment around him in love and life, and then roused by adulthood in his atmospheric surroundings. Everything about this story is sightless: the streets, the houses, the people, and especially our young main character. The atmosphere surrounding him provides the young boy with un-truths and false dreams.
The short story begins with, “ North Richmond Street, being blind”(15), blind is used here to mean dead end; the street in which the main character finds himself living on is described here as dead, unsighted. The houses are then described with animated qualities: “Detached from its neighbors…conscious of decent lives within them…gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces” (15). North Richmond Street is described allegorically and allows one a first glimpse into the world of the boy. Those who are aware, un-dead to the world, would feel d...

Posted by: Carlos Hernandez

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