James Joyce’s “Araby” takes place in Dublin, Ireland and tells the story of a boy who is beginning to enter his first glimpse of manhood. The main character, nameless for any number of reasons, is a boy between the ages of 10 and 12 who simply wishes to be connected to his best friend’s sister in some form of a relationship. The boy seems to be enamored with the attractive older girl, but not necessarily in a sensual way. He seems to regard the girl as a great religious and admirable icon to whom he can develop pre-romantic feelings for. Eventually the boy gets a quest from this girl in an indirect fashion, to go to a bazaar known as Araby, and bring her back a gift. The boy, who lives with his aunt and uncle, struggles to get permission and money to go to the bazaar, and then finds that when he arrives he does not have enough money to get her a gift. The boy feels a sense of anger and failure in his goal to bring something back to the girl from Araby.

There is a quest theme in this story. The boy is informed that the girl cannot attend the bazaar because she was already committed to a retreat with her convent school. This is an opportunity for the boy to impress the young woman who has caught his attention and show that he is becoming more like a man. He sets out on a quest to go to Araby and bring home with him a wonderful treasure from the bazaar from which the story got its name. His quest begins with him trying to obtain permission from his aunt to go to the bazaar. First he waits for the neighborly old gossip to leave because he cannot ask his aunt while she is there for quite obvious reasons. Then he asks his aunt and undergoes the normal protective questions such as what time he planned to be home. The next goal in his quest was to talk to his uncle about getting the money to go. His uncle consents, but when the day comes, he forgets that the boy wanted to go to the bazaar and had to be nudged by his wife to give the boy the money. When the boy finally receives the money he makes his way to Araby and pays the admission fee. Upon reaching one particular stand where a young female vendor was selling pottery and the like, the boy soon learned that he did not have enough money to bring back a gift for the girl he wanted to be his bonny love. The boy, then, has failed in the quest and the story ends with the reader to choose whether the boy will persevere and find a new venue, or if he will go back to the girl empty-handed.

There are few characters in this story. Of course there is the boy around whom the story revolves. There is the girl who is the sister of the boy’s best friend, Mangan, and there is Mangan himself. There are the boy’s guardians, his aunt and uncle who also go unnamed. There is also for a brief moment the old gossip, named Mrs. Mercer. For just as short a moment the young vendor also becomes a character of some interest. The vendor is of interest because she is suspicious of the boy’s intentions and is the pivotal reason for the boy’s sense of failure at the end of the story.

“Araby” is an interesting story to read. It was a story that kept me intrigued and it was easy to follow. The language was simple and inviting to any reader. It was not at all difficult to imagine the boy going through his quest, sitting in class thinking only of the girl and the gift he would get her at Araby; and, then after so much waiting to come to a point of failure, which at such an age is monumental and overwhelming. It is easy to picture the boy in his room pacing the floor and practicing what he would say to the girl. Then when he became filled with anguish and anger at the end of the story, imagining a fire in those same eyes and the first glimpse of him actually entering the world of adulthood is a natural reaction. It was as if a piece of his childlike innocence was stripped from him in the moment he found out that he could not bring back a gift to the girl with whom he was infatuated. He would have to admit to her that he was still somewhat a little boy and that he was not able to be the man he so desperately wanted, though it may have been subconsciously, to be.