Araby
When I read the story,I feel so sad。I really feel so sorry that Narrator felt very upset and hopeless at the end of the story,but I know that in twenty-century ,the whole society was surrounded by darkness。Most of people in there were cold, indifferent and apathetic. to all of people around them。
The short story Araby was writed by James Joyce,who always used large amounts of symbolic imageries to create a typical setting, help the plots develop and indicate the hero’s characteristics. So , in the short story he used a lot of symbols. First of all, the symbolic technique begins with the title Araby. The word "Araby" shares a similar spelling with "Araby". Definitely, it is neither a coincidence nor a spelling mistake. In other words, the author names it on purpose. Araby is an ideal destination full of oriental mystery and magic from the Westerners’ points of view. In the hero’s opinion, his beloved girl is as perfect as the bazaar Araby. Then what is the reality? On one hand, the boy finds himself in a big hall girdled at half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls are closed and the greater part of the hall is in darkness. Obviously, here Araby in reality has a totally different symbolic meaning from the previous imagination. To be specific, here Araby symbolizes the dull society of Ireland. On the other hand, he is shocked by the flirting of a young lady in the bazaar. So much to his surprise, Araby is not that wonderful and what’s worse, those good-looking girls are not that pure. Both points shatter his illusion of pureness。
It is easy to find the symbolism in the whole passage, which implies the sharp contrast between the imagination and reality, and foretells the boy’s inevitable frustration. At the beginning of the novel, we can see “a central apple tree” in a “wild garden behind the house”. On seeing the words “Apple tree”, we can immediately think of the myth between Adam and Swan in the Garden of Eden. In this novel, the apple tree id a symbol for the boy’s first love as well as a wish to try something new, But the tree was in a “wild garden behind the house”. The condition was so oppressed that the tree might not grow up robustly. This means that a trial for a new thing wasn’t encouraged by the Irish society, and the boy’s love towards Mangan’s sister couldn’t breed some results. At the end ,the sweet love was broken . Narrator became a loser.
In my opinion, it is important to use symbolic imageries to create a typical setting. if we can use it in our stories, we can make our paragraphs more vivid and meaningful。