Darkness In Araby

In the story “Araby” by James Joyce, we can observe how an adult man returns to his old neighborhood and he relives his old memories of his first love. He explains to us how when he was a child, he enjoyed playing with his friend Mangan through the darkness of the neighborhood. The darkness in this case can be related to liberty, fun, comfort, and known feelings. This can be reflected on a part of the third paragraph of the story, “The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind houses…we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed.” Afterwards, when Mangan’s sister call her brother, the boy had to came to the light to see her first love for the first time, as told on the third paragraph, “We left our shadow

I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days.” Making him believe in all of this fantasies about her day and night and the magic of Araby, but later on all of this fantasies are shredded when he arrives late to Araby and he only sees the same kind of people on the streets of his neighborhood, and maybe even worse as the way he was treated with contemptuous inside Araby as observed in this quote, “The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of sense of duty”. Given him a understanding how will be the transition to adulthood, that things don’t always looks at it seems. And when he was covered by darkness while Araby was closing, he realizes that this experience can be one from many to come.

Finally, I can see where the enchant of James Joyce’s works is rely on. Per example, in this story Araby many people would take it as a romantic drama, but for me I think it should be taken as a social analysis work. Since in this story is not mentioned any kind of name for his characters, just the description of people from the point a view from a same person at different stages of his life, in this case from