The coming-of-age novel Araby, from Dubliners, narrates a young boy who falls in love with his imaginary crush “Mangan’s sister”. Everyday, he ponders to have some kind of interaction with her, but never actually succeeds. One day, Mangan’s sister tells him she would like to go to the Araby Market, so the boy promises to buy her something special. However, on the boy’s planning day to visit Araby, his uncle forgets about his trip to the Market, resulting in delay of his travel. Finally arriving at the bazaar, an unfortunate thing happened: most of the stalls were closed. He catches a young woman with an English accent flirting with two men in her stall. The woman asks him if he wants to buy anything, but in an informal way, as if treating him like a “child”. Compared to his imaginations, the items and shopkeepers at the bazaar were not exotic, but native and simple. Left with nothing that he could afford, the boy stood there blankly with bursting anger inside of him.
Using wide imagination to escape reality can be considered a part of human nature, where we dream of certain figures and destinations that satisfy our temporary wills. Usually, our imagination would be really different compared to the actual existence, and we sometimes fail to recognize it until the last moment when we feel deeply affected by its consequence. In Araby, the young boy imagines the pretty elegant appearance of Mangan’s sister, and soon develops some romantic emotion toward her. This special feeling of a crush inside of him distracts his interaction with his friends, toward his guardians, and his behavior at school. While he imagines a wonderful relationship occurring between his crush and himself, especially when the real Mangan’s sister asks him if he could go to the Araby market, the reality reveals his fantasies. In practice, the boy merely had understanding of his crush Mangan’s sister, in fact, there is absolutely no direct contact between them. Another envision displayed inside the boy is how he depicts the picturesque Arabian bazaar, beholding an exotic atmosphere mixed with impassioned romance. He believes that Araby is a place brimming with fashionable foreign commodities. Contrastingly, the shopkeepers are all English speakers attempting to sell their merchandise towards local visitors. The bazaar ends up being a shallow, commercial version of his imagery. Apparently, the more his imagination luminates him, the more gloomy reality smites him as if he’s suffering a large consequence.
Idealization, the process of attributing overly positive qualities to a person or thing, happens to engender great change in attitude and the visualizer himself to suffer consequences. Individuals tend to idealize things by applying their imagination because they’re never satisfied with the physical world they live in, or wish for better living conditions. The boy in Araby is born an orphan, living with his relatives in a house being “blind and detached” with other inhabitants such as his contemporaries. Simultaneously, he’s also experiencing his stage of puberty, which adds to his idealization of being more superior than his friends. His desire of isolation and non disturbance from adults reveals his disdain, impatient attitude, his willingness to grow up… For example, he views his uncle as an untrustworthy, unreliable drunk man full of stupidity. Similarly, he never listens, does his homework, and goes against his teacher, revealing his despise of attending school. However, idealizing everything in the imagination makes him realize the harshness of reality in the end. Disappointment of gaining nothing in Araby and his loneliness reflects the dark consequence. Later on, setting apart from everyone, he has no chance to make friends and no contact with his lover, who he barely knows. He only imagines mainly the physical appearance of Mangan’s sister, but fails to know her inner side that other lovers usually do. Losing touch with reality may sometimes relieve ourselves, but continuing to idealize would definitely affect our life both in the present and future.
Coming of age are also referred to bildungsroman stories, where characters undergo maturation via their childhood experiences. This genre focuses on the character’s growth and a significant change in perspective afterwards as a flashback. In Araby, the boy notices a strong difference between the realistic harsh adulthood and halcyon childhood. In the beginning, he dreams of his adulthood to be exciting, making him thrilled to proceed to transformation; but in reality, he’s humiliated by his own vanity when he finally realizes that adulthood is harsh, drab, full of disappointment. At first, he had no excitement of his monotonous childhood since he forced his separation with the other children. He continues his wonder of manliness, whether having any stream of consciousness. Soon after, all of his excitement, vigor, or any fluctuating emotions begin to extinguish when he witnesses the dismantlement of the not-at-all exotic “Araby” bazaar. Reflecting back upon his failed premature love, Joyce concluded his childhood as a pity, both wasteful, depressed, and vacuous. Being a Christian in Christian Brothers’ School, he misuses his religious beliefs by worshiping Mangan’s sister as a “God”, which forbids a principle in Christianity with adoring only one God. Life happens to be starting with some childhood innocence and ending with self-consciousness.
The short story of Araby ends with the author reminiscing of his tragic experience of darkness, of his desire for sexuality and his transformation from a teenager to an adult. The turning point occurs in his last plaint “ I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” where he awakens from his unconsciousness, turning disappointed with puzzling. His prematureness reveals that he lacks a sense of romance, which is greatly caused by his dependence on Christianity. The story is not only about how he fails promoting his relationship, but understanding the idea that reality does not live up to our fantasies.
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