The Trauma of Coming-Of-Age: Joyce’s “Araby”, Essay Example

Introduction

Many authors, writing of their own experiences or otherwise, address the traumatic nature of adolescence and how it equates to shattering experience.  Often, an ideal is established, and usually of a romantic nature, but aspects of life destroy the ideal and the hero undergoes the disillusionment that is considered “growing up.”  This is what James Joyce’s hero in “Araby” confronts, and the story relies on how both the sacred and the profane interact to create the enormously important impact on him.  In a matter of only a few pages, then, Joyce’s “Araby” perfectly creates a world in which a young boy, in the first throes of adoration and a desperate longing for what he perceives as sacred, is exposed to a profane and awful reality of what the real world offers instead.

Discussion

To understand the interplay of the sacred and profane in the story, it is first necessary to comprehend the reality of the narrator’s existence.  In the working-class environment of the city, in which fiercely Catholic belief is framed by the sameness of struggle, there is little room for dreams. Days and living are defined by dull routine and structure, even as the hero and his friends expend their energies in wild play: “The other houses of the street…gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces” (Joyce 16). The clear impression is made that, as the boys mature, they will take their places in this arena of the ordinary, and accept how life relies on such acceptance, as well as belief in Catholic doctrine that promises salvation.  The stage is then set for the trauma that must occur when a boy holds to a dream and the dream is shattered.

This trauma centers on the object of the hero’s obsession, who is known only as Mangan’s sister.  Using language emphasizing the transcendent, Joyce presents romantic idealization such as only a young boy may feel.  Lust plays a part in this, but it is desire taken to a sacred realm, and because the boy requires his love to be far above the ordinary.  The image of the girl is with him constantly, reflecting genuine veneration.  Even in the most profane and mundane settings, thoughts of her and his pride in his own elevating of her to the sacred sustain his being.  Every day, he looks for her. In any place, he depends on the idea of her as a thing to be worshiped and loved.  What actually occurs is a relationship in which one element provides a basis for the other; the sacred in the story exists only as the profane presents the necessary contrast (Cotter 130). Her image held by him, he can confront the profane: “I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes” (Joyce 17).  The metaphor is critical because the girl takes on a spiritual quality to the hero, which in turn reflects the sacred quality of the Virgin Mary as felt by Catholics (Cotter 51). In no uncertain terms, the boy’s fixation on the girl translates to a religious experience or revelation, and because his veneration of her removes her from common, profane existence.

The final lines of the story then directly express the full nature of the experiences of adoring the girl and the contrasting misery of reality.  On leaving the bazaar, the boy is greatly changed: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (Joyce 21).  It is in fact difficult to understand whether his hatred of his own illusions is as strong as his contempt for what the bazaar has revealed to him, but this in itself reflects how the clash of the sacred and the profane, their exponential influences aside, goes to the inevitable trauma in leaving dreams, or veneration, behind.  The circumstances of the bazaar are ordinary, but the hero’s bringing his veneration to the scene, in his need to find something to offer to his love, renders the ordinary into the ugly and more profane.  The boy witnesses the flirtation between a young woman working at a stall and two young men, and this is crucial to the impact of his experience.  It is bad enough that he is late and the bazaar is now a scene of closing up and money-counting; worse is that, right before his eyes, the way “love” is expressed is presented to him as cheap and common.

Those concluding lines then powerfully convey the true reality of the boy’s shock and transformation, as the reality of life defies the expectation of it in the hero’s mind and heart.  Just as he has elevated Mangan’s sister to a role of desired Madonna, so too does he imagine, or insist upon, the bazaar as offering an ideal site of worship.  Here, he may retrieve a prize for his love, so the exotic nature of what is nothing more than a street fair takes on equal meaning for him.  The delay of his uncle creates intense pain for the hero, as the reader is free to feel the horrible  impact of the Aunt’s statement as he waits: “I’m afraid you may put off your bazaar on this night of Our Lord” (Joyce 19), which of itself mocks the “faith” held by him.  When he finally arrives, the profane scenario, emphasized by the ordinary activity as well as by the bland flirting of the girl at the stall, generate hopelessness in addition to rage.  If Joyce’s young hero undergoes a rite of passage all too common for adolescent boys, the author nonetheless perfectly presents how any such destruction of the sacred by the profane leads to trauma, and coming-of-age is an inherently and deeply painful experience.

Conclusion

It is certainly valid to claim that “Araby” essentially only details ordinary experience, in that it is common for young men to venerate an idealization of womanhood, and also face the destruction of their illusions.  At the same time, however, and through an emphasis on the sacred as perceived in both girl and exotic bazaar, Joyce expertly reveals the deeper dimensions of such experience, as the profane overwhelms the sacred and the misery of the ordinary triumphs.  As the last lines of the story reinforce, then, James Joyce’s “Araby” creates a world in which a young hero, in the first throes of adoring a venerated female in his intense longing for what he perceives as sacred, confronts the profane and awful reality of what the real world offers instead.

Works Cited

Cotter, David. James Joyce and the Perverse Ideal.  New York: Psychology Press, 2003. Print.

Joyce, James.  “Araby.”  From Dubliners.  New York: Viking Press, 1988.  Print.  16-21.