Characterization in Joyce's Story Araby - Essay Example

At the same time, some of the supporting characters may be regarded the driving force of the plot. For example, the girl the narrator likes sets up the chain of further events.Araby, a short story by James Joyce, contains a lot of themes and features which are generally typical of the author. For example, childhood, the pivotal motive of the story, and the process of growing up. That is what predetermines the choice of the narrator. The author uses the first-person narrative – the story is told by a boy of school age, or at least there is such an impression that the story belongs to a child.

This feeling, however, may be deceptive. The boy’s story is quite logical and well-constructed. For children, it is quite difficult to call their thoughts together and share them with other people. That is why it is possible to assume that the story is told by an adult man who just tries to recollect days of his childhood.What is more, the story is told in the past tense. This creates a certain distance between the moment of actual experiences and the moment when the story was written. This may also explain why Araby abounds with the pronoun ‘I’.

The narrator wants to submerge into his memories despite the flow of time.It is also possible to observe how contrastive and disharmonious the boy’s feelings are. He experiences absolutely different states of emotions. At first, this is unrestrained striving for the ideal which is later followed by the feeling of total despair and frustration. Araby may be also characterized as a story possessing a peculiar atmosphere of sanguine expectation of happiness. Thus, the main idea of the story is to show how elusive and desired happiness is.

It is necessary to focus on other two characters of the story – the boy’s aunt and uncle. The first thing which can be noticed is that none of them is referred to as a self-sufficient personality. What is important instead is the role they play in the boy’s life.