The
setting of "" is Dublin, capital city of Ireland and hometown of . The unnamed
narrator lives in a place called North Richmond Street, which is described as "blind."
We get a sense of Joyce is referring to as blindness in his description of this respectable but
bland part of town. The street is closed off from the wider world, both geographically and
culturally. This is a place where nothing much ever happens except for when school is out for
the day.
Though outwardly respectable, the boy's family could be described as
shabby genteel, that is to say they have come down in the world. One suspects that their
relative poverty has forced them to lead an itinerant lifestyle, constantly moving from one
rented place to another. It's small wonder, then, that the boy should feel the need to escape
from such a chronically unstable existence, that he craves the kind of excitement that only the
Araby bazaar promises to give. The boy, like the pupils of the Christian Brothers' school on the
street where he lives, wants to be set free, if only for a short time. He wants to leave behind
him the stifling, constricting world in which he's forced to live out his formative
years.
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