I remember that the first time I read ‘Araby’ all I was left with was that there was a house where a priest died. Those youthful days are long gone, but when rereading the story that first impression hits me straight from the first paragraphs. An unnamed boy is head over heels with “Mangan’s sister”, and when she mentions she can’t visit Araby, the local fair, the boy vows to go and bring her something. “The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me”. The house of the priest is the static element which stays unchanged on each reread, but it’s only this time that I noticed the narrator’s tone. The memory of Araby is painted in the blueish nuances of memory, and the story reads as a weave of bittersweet nostalgia and grandiose, yet gentle, irony. The boy’s feelings for the girl transform the mundane into the extraordinary, but the end of the story reveals the magical bazaar the boy imagined to be for what it really is – a dim, lacklustre place. In the end, it’s not really clear to me who is more disillusioned – the boy for not finding that perfect something to bring back or the adult narrator who knows what lies outside the illusion of perfection.
First published in Dubliners, Grant Richards Ltd., 1914
A Personal Anthology 