Critical Analysis of James Joyce’s “Araby”

Critical Analysis of James Joyce’s “Araby” “Araby”, by James Joyce, is a story about a boy’s innocent love and a bitter experience as a result. The town he lives in has seemingly nice houses, but they are becoming uninhabited and ruinous. His neighbors are strongly religious, but they are also falsely pious. His first love he found is a girl in his neighborhood, who attends a convent. He visits Araby to buy something …

…experience ironically. He equates this blindness that he experienced with his childishness. For example, he recalls the girl’s name as “a summons to all my foolish blood”, and says that the passionate feelings he had for her did “waste my waking and sleeping”. By applying this style of narration, Joyce clearly conveys that there is a certain gap between the ideal and the real, which the immature might not recognize but the mature do.