17
North Richmond Street from The
City Doublin,
The
Irish Times
larger
picture
Dublin; from The
City Dublin
larger
picture
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The
story, you may have found, reads very slowly (not much happens in the first
few pages), because it is very descriptive. Find some descriptive
passages and analyze them. It would be the best if you can find the
passages by yourselves, if not, the following are some examples:
1. The setting & the language
-
Read the
first two paragraphs carefully and see what kind of environment the
boy is in. (Pay attention to the house which is in a "blind," or
dead end street; the musty room, the dead priest; the rusty bicycle pump;
the apple tree and the garbage odors. )
2. The characters &
the language
-
In the
next three paragraphs, we get to see that the boy secretly loves an
older girl who is Mangan's sister. How does he describe his feelings
for her? How is the attention he pays to the girl different
from that of Sammy in "A & P"?
-
What kind of "character" do you think Mangan's
sister is? A round character? A flat character?
A substitute for something else? A character serving as a symbol?
Pay close attention to how Mangan's sister is presented in the third
and the tenth
paragraphs.
3. The plot
-
From the
third paragraph, we see the narrator, a child, play with his friends.
What kind of conflict/contrast does he experience in the story between
the boy and his environment, or between him and the adults (aunt,
uncle
and Mrs
Mercer) ?
-
When does the main action of the story start?
How does it change the narrator-boy?
4. Language: Religious images
-
What kind of sentiment does the boy have in
his love for the girl? Look at paragraphs 4-6
(e.g. the similes/metaphors used: "I bore my chalice"; "my
body was like a harp" and his fervent prayer) and paragraph 13.
4. The trip to Araby (the bazaar)
-
How is the bazaar presented at the end of
the story (e.g.
the dialogue between the woman and men, the image of darkness)?
What does this description, again, tell us about the boy's world?
-
Examine the role money plays in the trip to
the bazaar (paragraph 25
and 32).
5. Theme
-
Why do you think the boy loves the girl so
much, or, to put it in another way, in such a devout way?
-
What do you make of the ending? How
do you explain the word "vanity"?
-
The story is an initiation story, meaning
that the boy experienced growth, or a rite of passage, from one stage of
his life (e.g. childhood) to another (young adulthood). What
do you think the boy has learned? How is his growth similar to, or
different from, that of Sammy's?
6. Point of View
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Describe the narrator or point of view in
this story. Is this narrator, like Sammy in "A & P," a young
teenage boy or is he an older man remembering an important incident when
he was younger?
7. Free Association
-
What do you think about the boy's love for
Mangan's sister? Have you experienced puppy love or momentary infatuation
before? How is your experience different from or similar to the boy's?
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