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"araby" the third short story from his anthology of short stories Dubliners was written by Joyce in October 1905; the 23-year-old Joyce lived in Trieste and was teaching and struggling financially to keep his young family afloat. “Araby” is a relatively uncomplicated text in comparison to others in the collection. The bazaar written about actually occurred in 1894, but there is no telling if Joyce attended.

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The narrative technique for which Joyce is best known is stream of consciousness, explained in the introduction to Joyce in our textbook.  Joyce sought “a narrative technique that attempts to convey in prose fiction a sense of the progression of the full range of thoughts and sensations occurring within a character’s mind” (Glossary,p. 1122). Inherent in this approach are multiple shifts in perspective and points of view,and competing discourses.

Eg: "her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance ...we walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men...These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore a chalice safely through a throng of foes." (1225).

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Regarded as one of the most important authors of the twentieth century, James Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland, Joyce lived two-thirds of his life outside of Ireland on the European continent, but the formative first third of his life set the tone for his later writing; Dublin haunted his imagination and fiction for the rest of his life. Joyce had many misgivings over the Celtic Revival led by Yeats; he saw its nationalistic sentiment as a de-liberating force. Both philosophically and aesthetically, Joyce objected to many of his contemporaries’Platonic and Romantic idealizations of “primitive” Irish culture untainted by empire.

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The Abbot: Novel by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). Its central character is Roland Graeme, a young man reared by relatives (like the Araby narrator). Graeme becomes involved in romance and adventure, as the narrator of "Araby" dreams of doing after meeting Mangan's sister and then going on a knightly "quest" to the bazaar.
"The Arab's Farewell to His Steed": Alternate title for "An Arab's Farewell to His Horse," a popular poem by the English writer and social reformer Caroline Norton (1808-1877), granddaughter of the famed Irish-born British playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. In  Araby," the narrator's uncle is about to recite the opening lines of the poem when the boy leaves for the Araby bazaar.

Araby: Name of a bazaar (“Araby: a Grand Oriental Fête”) held in

Dublin May 14-19, 1894, to benefit a local hospital.

Ashpits: Perhaps symbols of the hellish life of many Dubliners.

Blind Street: Street that dead-ends. In the story and in real life, Dublin's North Richmond Street is a dead end, as Joyce points out in the first four words of "Araby"—perhaps to suggest that the boys playing on it are going nowhere.

Brown: Color that Joyce uses in "Araby" to draw attention to the plainness and dreariness of Dublin. He also uses it to describe the figure of theMangan girl, for she conjured up for him images of the Middle East, in particular the people of Arabia.

Devout Communicant: Abbreviation of a book title. The full title is The Devout Communicant, or Pious Meditations and Aspirations for the Three Days Before and Three Days After Receiving the Holy Eucharist. The author was Pacificus Baker (1695-1774), an English Franciscan priest. Joyce mentions the book in "Araby" perhaps as a hint that the narrator equates his attraction to the Mangan girl to a religious experience.

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In Araby, Joyce presents the church from two perspectives: that of the young narrator—who is a practicing Catholic, as Joyce was in his youth—and that of the irreligious adult author. The following sentences from the second paragraph exhibit this double perspective.

The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air, musty fromhaving been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers . . . He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.

Here, the boy attaches no special meaning to the condition of the room or the “useless papers.” Nor does he look down on the priest, for he notes that he had been a charitable man. However, it appears that the author himself—in looking back on his adolescence—intended the musty air and the useless papers to suggest that the church was an outdated institution with effete rules and doctrines. Like the priest, it would die. As to the generosity of the priest, Joyce seems to be raising the question of why he had money and property in the first place.

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At University College in Dublin, also run by the Jesuits, he received an excellent education in languages and participated in literary activities. By this time, however, Joyce had renounced Catholicism, mainly because of its unbending rules and strict enforcement of them. In his stories, he repeatedly accuses the Catholic Church of oppressing and debilitating Ireland. He also frequently mocks the church, its clergy, and its rituals even though Jesuit priests generously provided him an education at a crucial time in his life.