Dubliners is a novel that showcases the numbing nature of the city of Dublin. Each chapter centers around the paralyzing nature of the city, whether it is physical paralysis, emotional paralysis, or even social paralysis. Joyce intentionally writes each story to highlight one aspect of Dublin he feels hinders the social construct of the city. In “The Sisters,” Joyce depicts the priest’s physical paralysis and the numbing nature it has on his life. In “Eveline,” Joyce describes the emotional paralysis Eveline felt, causing her to stay in Dublin. These two stories play a prominent role in bringing paralysis to the forefront of Dublin, but it is in “Araby” that Joyce emphasizes paralysis in Dublin.
The story of Araby touches on social, emotional, and physical paralysis. A young boy becomes love-struck with his neighbor’s sister and loses all sense. He promises to go to Arbay, a bazaar that comes into town rarely, just to buy her something. Prior to this interaction, Joyce reveals aspects of the little boy’s life. Joyce states, “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free” (Joyce, 22). The word blind in this sentence correlates to a figurative and literal meaning. It refers to the street as a cul-de-sac or a dead-end street. Figuratively, it refers to the nature of the boy and his nativity. Later on, Joyce personifies the various houses on the street, describing them as being conscious of the lives within them. In this sense, the homes are more aware than those living there. This idea correlates with the detached feeling of those who lived in Dublin. Socially, the boy and the Irish people are paralyzed and detached because of the current nature of Dublin.
Emotionally, the young boy is paralyzed. He spends his time in school thinking of the young girl, daydreaming about her, and playing their encounters repeatedly in his mind. Essentially, he loses all sense about him. He is driven by vanity, not by love, causing him to be stuck in a never-ending “love time loop.” This can be connected to the disillusionment and escapism used by those in Dublin to escape the realities of their city. During Joyce’s time, Dublin was a dying organism. It was in the midst of the First World War, and there was an increase in the use of alcohol as a means to escape. This causes Dublin to be a city stuck in a paralyzing environment. Joyce is using Araby as a place for people to escape their reality and fantasize they are in a different place.
Furthermore, the young boy has no means or money to travel to Araby for this young girl, so he asks his uncle to borrow money for a train ride to the bazaar. His uncle agrees but is late getting home to the young boy, causing him to fret and worry about retrieving an item for the girl. This is an aspect of physical paralysis. The young boy is stuck waiting for his uncle rather than being able to go to the bazaar freely. In a sense, this correlates with the feelings of people living in Dublin, who feel like they cannot escape the city. When the young boy arrives at the bazaar, he quickly realizes that his nativity has blocked him from being able to purchase anything. Walking into the bazaar, he gives half of his money away. He enters one of the stores, hoping to find something for the young girl, but is met with rude remarks from the lady running the store. He is frozen, watching her as she counts money and conversates with the two young guys keeping her company. He completely loses focus and ends up leaving the store without anything. In this scene, the young boy is physically paralyzed because he does not fully think through finding something for the girl before promising her he would go. Joyce uses the boy’s physical paralysis to symbolize the debilitating nature of Dublin. Even though the young boy was outside of the city, he was still affected by the paralysis of Dublin.
Ultimately, Joyce created Dubliners to highlight the harsh reality of Dublin. Joyce viewed the city as morally corrupt and led by disillusion. The people in Dublin used means such as drinking and escapism to get away from their realities, which is symbolized throughout the stories of Dubliners. “Araby” is a perfect example of the paralysis Joyce wanted depicted in his chapters. The trifecta of paralysis!
It is true that “Araby” incorporates a number of ways in which paralysis has gripped Dublin and its people–yay, Madi, for identifying these. Still, I would have liked you to delve deeper into how Joyce evokes these ideas with words. You do it well in your discussion of the setting in paragraph one, but there’s more. What about the dead priest, his books, and his garden? What message is being sent here, that the boy misses?
Key to the boy’s problem is his confusion of physical attraction (love, for him) with religious devotion. Joyce repeatedly uses religious imagery to describe Mangan’s sister as the narrator sees her–the way he describes her body, her name, his genuflection before her at the railings, etc. There is also the quest motif that we see expressed again and again, culminating in the trip to Araby. These techniques need explication, to reveal the boy’s misunderstanding of his own infatuation. Like the truth about the priest, he is about to get a hard lesson in reality.
And then, there comes the bitter disappointment of self-awareness. How does the boy come to “see” himself and to experience shame at his own foolishness? What’s going on at the bazaar that clues him in? How does Araby reflect the exploitation of Ireland by the English?