“Araby”
“Araby”
The Romantic Quest and
Epiphany
Intent
My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my
country, and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed
to me the centre of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the
indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence,
maturity, and public life. The stories are arranged in this order. I
have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness
and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to
alter in the presentment, still more to deform, whatever he has
seen and heard.
(from Herbert Gorman, James Joyce, New York, 1940, V-iv.)
scrupulous meanness?
What does Joyce mean when he states
that he wants to write with scrupulous
meanness?
Scrupulous
adjective
(of a person or process) diligent, thorough, and
extremely attentive to details: the research has
been carried out with scrupulous attention to
detail.
• very concerned to avoid doing wrong: she's too
scrupulous to have an affair with a married man.
mean
mean 1 |mēn|
verb ( past and past participle meant |ment| ) [ with obj. ]
1 intend to convey, indicate, or refer to (a particular thing or notion); signify: I don't know what
you mean | he was asked to clarify what his remarks meant | I meant you, not Jones.
• (of a word) have (something) as its signification in the same language or its equivalent in another
language: its name means “painted rock” in Cherokee.
• genuinely intend to convey or express (something): when she said that before, she meant it.
• (mean something to) be of some specified importance to (someone), esp. as a source of benefit
or object of affection: animals have always meant more to him than people.
2 intend (something) to occur or be the case: they mean no harm | [ with infinitive ] : it was meant
to be a secret.
• (be meant to do something) be supposed or intended to do something: we were meant to go
over yesterday.
• (often be meant for) design or destine for a particular purpose: the jacket was meant for a
much larger person.
• (mean something by) have as a motive or excuse in explanation: what do you mean by leaving me
out here in the cold?
3 have as a consequence or result: the proposals are likely to mean another hundred closures |
[ with clause ] : heavy rain meant that the ground was waterlogged.
• necessarily or usually entail or involve: coal stoves mean a lot of smoke.
Mean
mean 2 |mēn|
adjective
1 unwilling to give or share things, esp. money; not generous: she felt
mean not giving a tip | they're not mean with the garlic.
2 unkind, spiteful, or unfair: it was very mean of me | she is always mean
to my little brother.
• vicious or aggressive in behavior: the dogs were considered mean.
3 (esp. of a place) poor in quality and appearance; shabby: her home was
mean and small.
• (of a person's mental capacity or understanding) inferior; poor: it was
obvious to even the meanest intelligence.
• dated of low birth or social class: it was a hat like that worn by the
meanest of people.
4 informal excellent; very skillful or effective: he's a mean cook | she
dances a mean Charleston.
Mean
mean 3 |mēn|
noun
1 the quotient of the sum of several quantities and their number; an
average: acid output was calculated by taking the mean of all three
samples. See also arithmetic mean, geometric mean.
• the term or one of the terms midway between the first and last terms
of a progression.
2 a condition, quality, or course of action equally removed from two
opposite (usually unsatisfactory) extremes: the mean between two
extremes.
adjective [ attrib. ]
1 (of a quantity) calculated as a mean; average: by 1989, the mean age at
marriage stood at 24.8 for women and 26.9 for men.
2 equally far from two extremes: hope is the mean virtue between
despair and presumption.
Scrupulous Meanness?
A paradox?
Scrupulous Meanness?
Think about the characters and events
encountered in “Araby” and describe in
your notes the extent to which ONE
character or event is emblematic of this
idea of “scrupulous meanness.”
I have written it for the most part in a style
of scrupulous meanness and with the
conviction that he is a very bold man who
dares to alter in the presentment, still more
to deform, whatever he has seen and heard.
The Quest
The Bazaar
Joyce at the Bazaar
The actual bazaar was enormous and
lively, and would have been as such even
at the late hour the narrator enters it.
Joyce at the Bazaar
In fact, a childhood friend of Joyce’s
recalls seeing him at the train station in a
large crowd of people
Speaker at the Bazaar
So why does Joyce alter the nature of
bazaar, going against his own stated wish
to not “alter...whatever he has seen or
heard”?
Epiphany
It is the flash in which the essential nature
of a person, an object, or a moment is
perceived, all at once. Joyce says, “its soul,
its whatness leaps to us from the vestment
of its appearance.”
Epiphany
Joyce often recorded his own epiphanies, then later used the idea
of epiphany in Dubliners as a symbolic literary technique to reveal
the paralysis of the city as well as the faults and shortcomings of
its inhabitants. Joyce also used the epiphany as a structural device;
rather than employing a traditional resolution, Joyce ends his
stories with the epiphany in the form of a speech (as in “The
Sisters” and “Grace”), a gesture (“Two Gallants”), or a “memorable
phase of the mind itself ” (“Araby” and“The Dead”), because the
reader’s revelation about the character’s condition satisfies Joyce’s
purpose in writing the story.
--Signet Classic Companion to Dubliners
Epiphany and Paralysis
Why does Joyce alter the reality of the
bazaar?