Araby

The boy in the story Araby is intensely subject to the city's dark, hopeless conformity, and his tragic yearning toward the ugly reality in the center of the story. On its simplest level, Araby is a story about a boy's first love. On a deeper level, however, it is a story about the world in which he lives. A world adverse to ideals and dreams. This deeper level is introduced and developed in several scenes: …

…do not belong to the Church. The boy and his companions go there at times, behind their houses, along the “dark muddy lanes.” Here odors arise from “the ash pits,” those images symbolic of the moral decay of his nation. Despite these discouraging surroundings, the boy is determined to find some evidence of the loveliness his idealistic dreams tell him should exist within the Church. His first love becomes the focal point of this determination.