James Joyces Araby - The Ironic Narrator of Araby Essay -- Joyce Dubl

The Ironic Narrator of  Araby    Although James Joyces bilgewater Araby is told from the first per-son shotpoint of its modern protagonist, we do not assemble the picture that a boy tells the story. Instead, the narrator seems to be a man develop well beyond the experience of the story. The mature man reminisces about his untested hopes, desires, and frustrations. More than if a boys mind had reconstructed the events of the story for us, this particular modal value of telling the story enables us to perceive clearly the torment offspring experiences when ideals, concerning both sacred and earthly love, are destroyed by a suddenly unclouded view of the actual world. Because the man, rather than the boy, recounts the experience, an ironic view can be presented of the institutions and persons surrounding the boy. This ironic view would be impracticable for the immature, emotionally involved mind of the boy himself. Only an adult smell back at the high hopes of foo lish blood and its resultant oddment could account for the ironic viewpoint. Throughout the story, however, the narrator consistently maintains a generous sensitivity to his fresh anguish. From first to last we sense the reality to him of his sooner idealistic fantasy of beauty. The opening paragraph, setting the scene, prepares us for the view we receive of the conflict between the loveliness of the ideal and the drabness of the actual. Descri... ...rious wares, is tended by unthoughtful people who leave him even more alone than he had been forward the young lady who should put one across waited on him ignores him to joke with two young men. The young ladys inane remarks to the young men have a ring in the memory of the mature narrator resonating of his adored ones remarks. Both are concerned with the material, the crass. The narrator can, with his backward look, affix us with two apprehensions one, the fully remembered, and thus fully felt, anguish of a too sudden reali zation of the disparity between a youthful dream of the mystic beauty of the world and his actual world and two, the irony implicit in a view that can see the dream itself as a vanity.