"Araby", James Joyce

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8 word format

document in english

literature

book review

published 08/03/2007

review : not yet assessed

level : Advanced

requested 43 times

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Summary

This short story was written by James Joyce who lived from 1882 to 1941; it is an extract from Dubliners, published in 1914. The book is compound with several short stories which take place in Dublin, and deal with the monotone life of some citizens. The text is entitled "Araby" and tells the story of the unrequited love of a young boy trapped in his everyday life. The events are presented through the voice of an anonymous narrator and reveal his difficulty to escape from the routine and his prosaic life. The author tackles many themes and symbols which allow the reader to enter a dark world surrounded by frustration, sadness and reality.

A homodiegetic narrator
The short story is compound with passages of descriptions, narrations and some dialogues, and can be divided in three parts
The author's style
The time
The location
Joyce uses many rhetoric devices throughout this text, which confers a poetic tone to the story but also contrasts with the theme of reality
The themes of adventure and romanticism
Dream sullied by reality
The narrator as a romantic hero, opposed to the lexical field of everyday life