“Araby” in Ireland: An Imperial Wolf in Sheik’s Clothing

Abstract

While many believe that “Araby” is a story of a young boy’s early realization of the futility of turn-of-the-century Dublin life, I propose that its detached narrator tells the story in such a way that he acknowledges that he understands of how Ireland is being manipulated by the British government and that such a realization is the basis for change. If like the boy, the Irish fall into the not always negative stereotype that they are romantic (that is, “original”) by nature, they run the risk of falling prey to those who would try to capitalize on this tendency. Instead of, as they boy did, trying to fill the national type of the romantic wanderer, the religious crusader, he who blindly loves that which symbolizes his nation, the Irishman should strive to be an individual so as not to fall into the trap of the English colonizer. It is possible that it is not the creating of the “Orient” that is hazardous, but that the Orient created by the wrong people is hazardous. Perhaps in his manipulation of the factual occurrence of the bazaar, Joyce was actually showing that despite the glamour that the English sponsors of the bazaar wanted the Irish patrons to see, so that they would spend money and have a greater reverence for the magnanimity of the Empire, the promise of opulence for the Irish through the Empire is empty, and
is self-serving, benefiting only the Empire itself.