1Readers of “Araby” often focus on the final scene as the key to the story. They assume the boy experiences some profound insight about himself when he gazes “up into the darkness” (par. 37). I believe, however, that the boy sees nothing and learns nothing—about either himself or others. He’s not self-reflective; he’s merely self-absorbed.

2Joyce uses imagery of blindness and the ironic point of view of the narrator to show the boy’s failure of sight and insight. There can seem to be a profound insight at the end of the story only if we empathize with the boy and adopt his point of view. In other words, we must assume that the young boy is narrating his own story. But if the real narrator is the grown man looking back at his early adolescence, then it becomes possible to read the narrative as ironic and to see the boy as confused and blind.

3The story opens and closes with images of blindness—a framing device that shows the boy does not change but ends up with the same lack of understanding that he began with. The street is “blind” with an “uninhabited house...at the blind end” (par. 1). As he spies on Mangan’s sister, from his own house, the boy intentionally limits what he is able to see by lowering the “blind” until it is only an inch from the window sash (par. 4). At the bazaar in the closing scene, “the light was out,” and the upper part of the hall was “completely dark” (par. 36). The boy is left “gazing up into the darkness,” seeing nothing but an inner torment that burns his eyes (par. 37).

4This blindness appears to be caused by the boy’s obsession with Mangan’s sister. When he tries to read at night, for example, the girl’s “image [comes] between [him] and the page,” in effect blinding him (par. 12). In fact, he seems blind to everything except this “image” of the “brown-clad figure cast by [his] imagination” (par. 16). The girl’s “brown-clad figure” is also associated with the houses on “blind” North Richmond Street, with their “brown imperturbable faces” (par. 1). The houses stare back at the boy, unaffected by his presence and gaze.

5He is obsessed with Mangan’s sister but he can’t see her for who she really is. His description of her and interpretation of the few words she says to him can be seen as further evidence of his blindness. He sees only what he wants to see, the “image” he has in his mind’s eye (par. 5). This image comes more from what he’s read than from anything he’s observed. He casts her simultaneously in the traditional female roles of angel and whore:

6He is totally self-absorbed. But at the same time, he is also blind to himself. He says repeatedly that he doesn’t understand his feelings: “Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why)” (par. 5). His adoration of her is both “confused” and confusing to him. He has no self-understanding (par. 5).

7The best insight we have into the boy comes from the language he uses. Much of his language seems to mimic the old priest’s romantic books: “Her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood” (par. 4); “I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes” (par. 5); “my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires” (par. 5). Language like this sounds as though it comes out of a popular romance novel, something written by Danielle Steel perhaps. The mixing of romance with soft porn is unmistakable. Perhaps the boy has spent too much time reading the priest’s sexually seductive stories from The Memoirs of Vidocq (par. 2).

8Joyce uses this kind of language ironically to point to the fact that the narrator is not the young boy himself but the young boy now grown and looking back at how “foolish” he was (par. 4). This interpretation becomes likely when you think of “Araby” as a fictionalized autobiography. In autobiographical stories, remembered feelings and thoughts are combined with the autobiographer’s present perspective. The remembered feelings and thoughts in this story could be seen as expressing the boy’s point of view, but we read them ironically through the adult narrator’s present perspective. The romantic, gushy language the boy uses is laughable. It reveals the boy’s blindness toward everyone, including himself. He sees himself as Sir Galahad, the chivalric hero on his own grail quest to Araby. The greatest irony comes at the end when his quest is exposed as merely a shopping trip and Araby as merely a suburban mall.

9Most people interpret the ending as a moment of profound insight, and the language certainly seems to support this interpretation: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (par. 37). But here again we see the narrator using inflated language that suggests an ironic stance. So even in the moment of apparent insight, the boy is still playing a heroic role. He hasn’t discovered his true self. He’s just as self-absorbed and blind in the end as he was at the beginning.