The third story of the collection, it is the last story with a first-person narrator. It continues with the structure: we have had young boys for our central characters in both "The Sisters" and "An Encounter," and here we have a boy in the midst of his first passion. As the boy is becoming a man, the bazaar becomes figurative for the difficulty of the adult world, which the boy proves unable to navigate. Boyish fantasies are dashed by the realities of life in Dublin. The first three stories are all narrated in the first-person, and they all have nameless boys as their narrators. All three narrators seem sensitive and intelligent, with keen interests in learning. Joyce, still in his early twenties when he wrote Dubliners, clearly drew on his own personal experiences more directly in writing these three tales.
Araby’s key theme is frustration, as the boy deals with the limits imposed on him by his situation. He has a series of romantic ideas, about the girl and the wondrous event that he will attend on her behalf. But on the night when he awaits his uncle's return so that he can go to the bazaar, we feel the boy's frustration mounting. For a time, the boy fears he may not be able to go at all. When he finally does arrive, the bazaar is more or less over. His fantasies about the bazaar and buying a great gift for the girl are revealed as ridiculous. For one thing, the bazaar is a rather tawdry shadow of the boy's dreams. He overhears the conversation of some of the shopkeepers, who are ordinary English women, and the mundane nature of the talk drives home that there is no escape: bazaar or not, the boy is still in Dublin, and the accents of the shopkeepers remind the reader that Dublin is a colonized city. The boy has arrived too late to do any serious shopping, but quickly we see that his lateness does not matter. Any nice gift is well beyond his price range. We know, from the description of the boy's housing situation and the small sum his uncle gives him, that their financial situation is tight. Though his anticipation of the event has provided him with pleasant daydreams, reality is much harsher. He remains a prisoner of his modest means and his city. At the epiphany of Araby we see grave disappointment which we knew was going to happen by what was described leading up to the bazaar. Disappointment was shown by the description of the journey “deserted train”, “ruinous houses” and by the delay that was imposed on the train.
In Eveline from the opening lines we see her longing and disappointment “she sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue”. After the death of her mother Eveline has had to look after her father and put up with his constant abuse. A certain desire grows within her of escape from this life which she finds in Frank. We learn that Frank asks her to go away with him but and she is becomes certain that this is exactly what she’s going to do.
Yet again, this story focuses on the theme of escape. While the young boy narrators of the previous stories are too young to leave Ireland or do anything about their poverty, Eveline has been given a chance. Yet in the end, the girl finds herself incapable of going.
Certainly, she has every reason to leave. The portrait we have of her family life is less than heart-warming. We see that she has taken on an incredible part of the burden in keeping the family together, as her mother did before her. Her father, despite the points he wins for not beating her, is a domineering and unfair man, who makes his daughter work and then keeps her wages. Rather than appreciate her sacrifices, he ridicules her. Unpleasant characters in Joyce's works often criticize the Irishman who leaves Ireland, the most common opinion being that they are ungrateful children of their country. Joyce turns this insult around in "Eveline": we don’t see an ungrateful child, but an ungrateful parent. Eveline's family life becomes a metaphor for the trap that is Ireland.
Her mother provides the chilling example of what it means to be a grateful child, and to do what is expected: we learn that she lived a life "of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness" (33). The phrase she utters repeatedly is probably nonsense but the meaninglessness of the phrase suggests, metaphorically, that the sacrifices have also been meaningless. Eveline's mother has earned nothing but madness.
The structure continues. Eveline is adult, a young woman old enough to get married. Joyce gives us in concise detail the terrible poverty and pressure of her situation. The weight of poverty and family responsibilities bear down on this young woman heavily; her financial situation is far worse than that of the three boy narrators of the previous stories. She is trapped in an ugly situation, responsible for her brothers and sisters and the aging father who abuses her.
Paralysis is a common theme in Dubliners, and poor Eveline finds herself unable to move forward. She lacks the courage and strength to make that leap that will free her of her oppressive situation. She's too scared to leave Ireland, and sees her lover as a possible source of danger: "All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. Frank was drawing her into them: he would drown her" (34). But her paralysis will cost her. Instead of an uncertain but hopeful future, she faces a certain and dismal future that may well repeat her mother's sad life story but her face at the end is not one of disappointment and shows does not show no desire but shows her duty to her family and to what her mother said. Her sense of what is right and what she actually feels is blocked by this. This is the moment of epiphany and were everything is reversed and “amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish” and she couldn’t go but she knew what she faced if she stayed.
By Karl Green 5M
