After I started to read “Araby” by James Joyce I realized what you mean in activity one that it’s not a love story. I feel that the mood throughout the story was very down, sad, gloomy, and dull. Well, there was a crush, like, love, young boy love. Whatever its call it’s sadly one-sided. He was you can even say obsessive over her and was very desperate for the sister. You can see a lot of that with his gift. While his, at this point let’s just call it a, crush on her, in the end, seem to kick him into some kind of depression “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity, and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” (37)
“
3 thoughts on “Wyman Siu Discussion 5”
Yes, I agree. The young boy was obsessive over her, the things he had done trying to get their attention, but then got disappointed. The sentence ” I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity” proves he realizes that he’s not getting what he wants. He is still young and so hopefully he will learn from this
I agree with your view on depression, I feel like he realized how pathetic he was that it drove him into stillness. He reflected on himself after the lady selling the jars answered to him in a careless way, that’s when he realized he didn’t want to get anything. The feelings of anguish and anger were a result of embarrassment, after describing the scenery of darkness he pitied himself. So, there for depression and darkness go hand in hand.
Hi Yman, this story is indeed gloomy and pretty sad. From the beginning we realized that as the readers, by the description of the setting; it is very dark and dreary. The only piece of light in the story is the neighbor’s sister. When he describes her it’s full of imagery and admiration. He waited to talk to her and when they finally did talk he promised her a gift from the bazaar. Unfortunately, he didn’t get on time to the bazaar and most of it was closed already when he got there, therefore he didn’t buy her a gift. So this story is full of disappointment, anger, and overall it’s sad because he couldn’t make the promise to the woman that he cares about.