1“Araby” tells the story of an adolescent boy’s initiation into adulthood. The story is narrated by a mature man reflecting on his adolescence and the events that forced him to face the disillusioning realities of adulthood. The minor characters play a pivotal role in this initiation process. The boy observes the hypocrisy of adults in the priest and Mrs. Mercer; and his vain, self-centered uncle introduces him to another disillusioning aspect of adulthood. The boy’s infatuation with the girl ultimately ends in disillusionment, and Joyce uses the specific example of the boy’s disillusionment with love as a metaphor for disillusionment with life itself. From the beginning, the boy deludes himself about his relationship with Mangan’s sister. At Araby, he realizes the parallel between his own self-delusion and the hypocrisy and vanity of the adult world.

2From the beginning, the boy’s infatuation with Mangan’s sister draws him away from childhood toward adulthood. He breaks his ties with his childhood friends and luxuriates in his isolation. He can think of nothing but his love for her: “From the front window I saw my companions playing below in the street. Their cries reached me weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the cool glass, I looked over at the dark house where she lived” (par. 16). The friends’ cries are weak and indistinct because they are distant emotionally as well as spatially. Like an adult on a quest, he imagines he carries his love as if it were a sacred object, a chalice: “Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance.... I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes” (par. 5). Even in the active, distracting marketplace, he is able to retain this image of his pure love. But his love is not pure.

3Although he worships Mangan’s sister as a religious object, his lust for her is undeniable. He idolizes her as if she were the Virgin Mary: “her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door.... The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing” (par. 3, 9). Yet even this image is sensual with the halo of light accentuating “the white curve of her neck.” The language makes obvious that his attraction is physical rather than spiritual: “Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side” (par. 3). His desire for her is strong and undeniable: “her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood” (par. 4); “my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires” (par. 5). But in order to justify his love, to make it socially acceptable, he deludes himself into thinking that his love is pure. He is being hypocritical, although at this point he does not know it.

4Hypocrisy is characteristic of the adults in this story. The priest is by far the most obvious offender. What is a man of the cloth doing with books like The Abbot (a romantic novel) and The Memoirs of Vidocq (a collection of sexually suggestive tales)? These books imply that he led a double life. Moreover, the fact that he had money to give away when he died suggests that he was far from saintly. Similarly, at first glance Mrs. Mercer appears to be religious, but a closer look reveals that she too is materialistic. Her church work—collecting used stamps for some “pious purpose” (presumably to sell for the church)—associates her with money and profit (par. 17). Even her name, Mercer, identifies her as a dealer in merchandise. In addition, her husband is a pawnbroker, a profession that the church frowns on. Despite being linked to money, she pretends to be pious and respectable. Therefore, like the priest, Mrs. Mercer is hypocritical.

5The uncle, as the boy’s only living male relative, is a failure as a role model and the epitome of vanity. He is a self-centered old man who cannot handle responsibility: When the boy reminds him on Saturday morning about the bazaar, the uncle brushes him off, devoting all his attention to his own appearance. After being out all afternoon the uncle returns home at 9:00, talking to himself. He rocks the hallstand when hanging up his overcoat. These details suggest that he is drunk. “I could interpret these signs” indicates that this behavior is typical of his uncle (par. 19). The uncle is the only character in the story the boy relies on, but the uncle fails him. Only after the aunt persuades him does the uncle give the boy the money he promised. From the priest, Mrs. Mercer, and his uncle, the boy learns some fundamental truths about adulthood, but it is only after his visit to Araby that he is able to recognize what he has learned.

6Araby to the adolescent represents excitement, a chance to prove the purity of his love and, more abstractly, his hope; however, Araby fulfills none of these expectations. Instead, the boy finds himself in utter disillusionment and despair. Araby is anything but exciting. The trip there is dreary and uneventful, lonely and intolerably slow—not the magical journey he had expected. When he arrives, Araby itself is nearly completely dark and in the process of closing. With his excitement stunted, he can barely remember why he came there (to prove the purity of his love by buying a gift for Mangan’s sister).

7The young lady selling porcelain and her gentleman friends act as catalysts, causing the boy to recognize the truth of his love for Mangan’s sister. Their conversation is flirtatious—a silly lovers’ game that the boy recognizes as resembling his own conversation with Mangan’s sister. He concludes that his love for her is no different than the two gentlemen’s love for this “lady” (par. 26). Neither love is pure. He too had only been playing a game, flirting with a girl and pretending that it was something else and that he was someone else.

8His disillusionment with love is then extended to life in general. Seeing the last rays of hope fading from the top floors of Araby, the boy cries: “I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (par. 37). At last he makes the connection—by deluding himself, he has been hypocritical and vain like the adults in his life. Before these realizations he believed that he was driven by something of value (such as purity of love), but now he realizes that his quest has been in vain because honesty, truth, and purity are only childish illusions and he can never return to the innocence of childhood.