Themes And Characters In James Joyce's Araby

In James Joyce 's "Araby," the unnamed narrator, who is a young boy at the time of the story, tries to impress his secret love but learns for himself that he cannot. The youthful narrator is charmed by one of his friend’s, Mangan, sister. He is hoping, with high expectations, to buy a gift for Mangan’s sister at the Araby bazaar, which serves to him as an image of leaving the hindering environment of his neighborhood and community in Dublin, where he lives and attends school. Through these characters and the area of the plot, the author contacts the theme that within a man’s young dignity and his unexperienced lust, he will finds an opposite result that will end up disappointing the narrator, which is caused by his immaturity and the constraint of the world he is in. The narrator’s life in the city of Dublin is frustrating from day to day because of the area in which he lives in. The author shows how quiet and lonely the community is in the first paragraph of the story: "North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street an uninhabited house of two stories stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square ground" (Joyce 155). Surrounded by the dullness of the neighborhood and community, the narrator yearns to be heavily focused on fulfilling the expectations for the purchases from the bazaar and his high expectations from Mangan’s sister. While moving through with his daily tasks such as attending school, the narrator is frequently engaged with the thoughts