Friday, 24 April 2009

How is the boy in James Joyce's short story "Araby" characterized?

The boy in s
short story is characterized in a number of different ways, including the
following:

  • He grows up in relatively poor and unpromising
    circumstances, but he does not seem especially bitter, angry, or self-pitying about those
    circumstances themselves. Whatever harsh judgments he makes are judgments he usually directs at
    himself.
  • He seems as imaginative as an adult as he was as a boy, as when he
    usesto describe how the

other houses of the
street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable
faces.

  • He seems unconventional, as when he
    notes that he liked a particular book because its pages were yellow.  Another kind of boy might
    have had entirely different, and entirely predictable, kinds of reasons for liking a particular
    book.
  • He seems capable of appreciating ethical behavior, as in his praise
    of the very charitable priest.
  • He is observant, as when he notes
    that

The space of sky above us was
the...


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