Araby Is Thus A Frustrated Quest For An Ideal

‘Araby is thus a frustrated quest for an Ideal’- Discuss
Or Araby is about a frustrated love and dream

James Joyce said that Araby is one of his stories about his childhood,which is taken from Joyce’s
Dubliners,is written from the viewpoint of a man in maturity looking back on an event in his
childhood and it centres on a young boy’s first encounter with infatuation and disillusionment.It
is in the words of A.R.Coulthard, “an initiation story recounting young romantic’s first bitter
taste of reality.”In Araby,Joyce concentrates on the mind of the boy,his different feelings and
reactions as he narrates his own story of love for Mangan’s sister. She is all beautiful to him and
like Keats, the boy too at the beginning thinks-
“What the imagination seizes as beautiful,must be truthful”.But as he narrates his progress of

mind,he arrives at a completely different conclusion.He finds that dream and reality are two
different conclusions.He finds that dream and reality are two different things,what he hoped
for is not what he achieved.
Araby is the name given to Grand Oriental Fete,held in Dublin from May 14-19,1894 and
Mangan’s sister is the ideal beauty.It is as if,the deity comes down to have compassion on the
boy ,seeking escape from the miserable and annoying world of North Richmond
Street.Everything about this place is unhealthy and unhygienic,the houses have brown
imperturbable faces,the air is musty,the pages of the books are damp,the air is cold and
stinging.The gardens are dark,deep odours come from ashpits.So,the place is around North
Richmond Street,is the sphere of sorrow,from which Mangan’s sister is imagined to be a form
of escape ,the boy is fascinated and so charmed that he cannot think anything else.
“Her image accompanied me even in the places the most hostile to

romance”.If North Richmond Street is hostile to romance,the markets on Saturday evenings are
the most hostile to romance.The boy begins to imagine that the world around him is full of
enemies trying to take away from him the holy image of Mangan’s sister.He is now Galahad
trying to protect the Holy Grail.The Holy Grail is the symbol of Christian faith and to the boy the
image of Mangan’s sister is as holy and like Galahad he can never think of living without it for a
moment ,He has, as if, lost control over himself;
“But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers
running upon the wires”.It was a great relief to the boy narrator when she spoke to him.He
waited and waited to have a talk to her and finally when the occasion arrived,he could not say
anything sensible in his ‘confused adoration’,but her words about Araby is that;”It could be a
splendid bazaar” taught his imagination and the syllables of the word,Araby were called to him
through the silence on which his soul luxuriated.He promised to bring something for her,it
would be an offering the soul,an expression of feeling of worship within him.
All his thoughts are now turned on one thing that is to go to the Araby and bring something for
her.That is the only thing his life seemed meant for,if he has to do anything else,they are
meaningless.Even study in school seemed,’Child’s play,ugly monotonous child’s play’.The
intervening days seem tedious.He asks for money and leaves to go to the bazaar on
Saturday.He has to wait till the day comes and also for his uncle to come,to give him money.On
that day he has his eyes on the clock and its ticking begins to irritate him as he waits for his
uncle to arrive.The irritation of waiting increases as his uncle delays return home.It reaches its
highest point and he finds the delay unbearable when his uncle says that he was sorry that he
has forgotten about it.It is a psychological battle that the boy fights and he shows remarkable
patience in waiting on and on.
Ultimately the long wait seems to be over,the train arrives and he sees.”In front of me was a
large building which displayed the magical name”.imagination and hope are at their highest,he
is as if looking at the walls of paradise from the outside.But the moment he enters,his feeling
changes.He finds the stalls closed and the greater part of the hall in darkness.The same image
of the half-light,half-dark is continued here.Whenever the boy saw Mangan’s sister ,he saw only
those parts on which light fell and he never saw her in totality or completeness.The same is the
true of the bazaar.
The romance is gone,the long wait has been meaningless.The Galahad has failed in his quest for
the Holy Grail.The boy becomes angry.It is an anger arising out of his disillusionment,
“Gazing up into darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity;and my eyes
burned with anguish and anger”.The boy feels as Mr.Duffy feels at the end of ‘A Painful Case’;
He felt that he was alone:Here,The boy realizes that Araby is a place very much
like North Richmond Street,most hostile to romance.However much we try to live according to
an ideal,it fails.Araby thus becomes a story of man’s universally frustrated quest for an ideal.

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‘Araby is thus a frustrated quest for an Ideal’- Discuss

Or Araby is about a frustrated love and dream

“What the imagination seizes as beautiful,must be truthful”.But as he narrates his progress of

“Her image accompanied me even in the places the most hostile to

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