Araby Light And Darkness Essay

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In the short story, Araby, by James Joyce, both the description of Dublin and the main character’s experiences help to paint a picture of the society James Joyce was living in the early 20th century. The descriptions of light and darkness and the repetitive, mundane details of Dublin and the bazaar help to describe a society that has trapped its people in a never ending circle of restraint and frustration.
There is a prevalent theme of light and darkness throughout the story and it helps to illustrate how the town people may often expect more than reality can provide. The story uses darkness and lighting in order to show how unrealistic the boy’s expectations are when confronting Managan’s sister who is, “illuminated by the light from the half-opened …show more content…
She is like a firefly in his world of darkness, and he is blindly following the only thing he can see. The constant darkness is used throughout the short story in order to create a more dramatic contrast between the hopeful light and the frustrating, pitch-black darkness. Managan’s sister is always shown illuminating the darkness that surrounds the town. The “ lights that define her figure [in] the doorway,” are used to symbolize and create a sense of a false reality out of the gloominess that is the main character’s true reality (Joyce 34). Managan’s sister is the boy’s infatuation and he feels as if he is “a harp [with] her fingers running up upon the wires,” (Joyce 35) controlling him and his thoughts. She is represented by light and is almost seen as a holy angel since she is constantly illuminated by the bright streetlights in the pitch black. The girl also represents something that the young boy in reality can never obtain no matter how hard he tries. He is like a moth drawn to a flame, and only sees his “confused adoration” for the girl, at the end of his crazy road of reality (Joyce 35). The whole light and darkness concept of the story is a vital part of the story, as it shows that the main character of the story is ignorant to the real world of darkness. He …show more content…
By selectively restricting the words used in the short story, the author draws emphasis on the fact that the main character constantly wants to escape the sense of restriction in his town where the “houses had grown sombre” (Joyce 34). It is clear that the main character wants to experience the foreign and “splendid bazaar” (Joyce 37). The main character constantly wants to go out and explore different options, such as going out of his way just to get a gift for a girl that he barely knows. The limited use of words is used in order to give the short story no sense of freedom with words, almost like how the boy has no freedom in his life due to the town’s social conformity. There is hardly any description of color and there is no description of texture, which adds to the seemingly black and white color scale of the story. There are very little options for the young boy and the word choices set the tone of the story parallel to the tone of the boy’s own life. Likewise, there are few words, such as dark, light, and the constant mentioning of Managan’s sister, that the author uses in order to describe the harsh life lesson to maturity in this short story. The dullness of the description and the repetition makes the story feel like “air, musty from having been long enclosed” (Joyce 33). Repetition also emphasizes importance and
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