Themes of Alienation and Control in James Joyces Araby Essay -- James

Alienation of Araby Although Araby is a fairly short story, author pile Joyce does a remarkable job of discussing some very deep issues inside it. On the surface it appears to be a story of a male childs slip up to the market to get a gift for the girl he has a crush on. Yet deeper d accept it is about a lonely boy who makes a pilgrimage to an eastern-styled bazaar in hopes that it will somehow assuage his miserable life. James Joyces uses the boy in Araby to expose a story of isolation and deficiency of control. These themes of alienation and control are lastly linked because it will be seen that the source of the boys emotional distance is his want of control over his life. The story begins as the boy describes his neighborhood. Immediately feelings of isolation and hopelessness begin to set in. The street that the boy lives on is a dead end, right from the beginning he is trapped. In addition, he feels cut by the categorys on his street. Their brown imperturbabl e faces make him feel excluded from the meet lives within them. The street becomes a representation of the boys self, abandoned and detached, with the houses personified, and arguably more alive than the residents (Gray). Every detail of his neighborhood seems knowing to inflict him with the feeling of isolation. The boys house, like the street he lives on, is filled with decay. It is suffocating and musty from being long enclosed. It is difficult for him to establish any secernate of connection to it. Even the history of the house feels unkind. The houses previous tenant, a priest, had died term living there. He left all(prenominal) his money to institutions and the furniture of the house to his sister (Norton Anthology 2236). It was as if he was trying to insure the boys boredom and solitude. The barely thing of interest that the boy can find is a steering wheel pump, which is rusty and rendered unfit to play with. Even the wild garden is forbidding and desolate, containi ng but a lone apple tree and a fewer straggling bushes. It is hardly the sort of yard that a young boy would want. Like most boys, he has no voice in choosing where he lives, yet his surroundings have a powerful effect on him. His home and neighborhood are not the only sources of the boys animosity. The weather is excessively unkind to the boy. Not only is it cold, but the short days of pass make play more difficult under the feeb... ... is not at all that he imagined. It is dismal and dark and thrives on the profit cause and the eternal lure its name evokes in men. The boy realizes that he has located all his love and hope in a world that does not exist except in his imagination. He feels angry and betrayed and realizes his self-deception. He feels he is a creature driven and derided by vanity and the vanity is his own ( sample Essays). The story provides many sources for the boys animosity. Beginning with his home and overall environment, and reaching all the way to the adults that surround him. However, it is clear that all of these causes of the boys isolation have something in common, he has control over none of these factors. While many of these hazard no one can expect to have control over, it is the mop up of all these elements that lead to the boys undeniable feeling of lack of control.Works CitedThe Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York W.W. Norton & Company. 2000Classic Notes on Dubliners. Grade Saver. 2003. Sample Essays Analyzing James Joyces Short Story Araby. Gray, Wallace. Notes for James Joyces Araby. World Wide Dubliners.