Character Analysis in Araby by James Joyce

Joyce’s sense of strong symbolism of Mangan's sister/ Mangan’s bracelet and Money throughout “Araby'' exhibits the young boy's doubtful desires to be transformed into maturity. To begin, the young boy desperately falls in love with Mangan's sister and strives for the attention she brings towards him. Ever since she first talked to the young boy, he believed that she developed feelings for him too. “At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did not know what to answer…. While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist(2).  In other words, this is proof that not all hopeful desires are going to be met due to the fact that, his actions towards the girl demonstrates that the boy is too tied up in Mangan's sister's romantic illusions and desires, which then makes up an image of her in his head and makes the boy believe that his desires of the girl falling in love with him will come true.  Although, the young boy should realize that just because Mangan’s sister was talking with the young boy does not mean she was attracted to him. Although the young boy thinks differently since as a child, there is no sense of real/true love until the child truly experiences it. The turning of the silver bracelet indicates that she is not utterly interested in the conversation she was having with the young boy, but the young boy was too oblivious to realize that and it proves that his desires for the girl falling in love with him will not come true since he is caught in the romantic illusion of the girl. Next, the young boy’s hopeful desires are also not met when the young boy asks his uncle again for money for the Bazaar, although it takes an unsuccessful turn once again. “When he was midway through his dinner I asked him to give me the money to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten”(4). This is proof that not all hopeful desires are going to be met because, as a child, a child believes that all of their hopeful desires should have been met no matter what. Although, now the boy does not demonstrate any physical complaints as he did before when his uncle was late which in that sense he made a fist. This prevails that he slowly realizes that small reality check. Overall, every little inconvenience the boy experienced that was negative to him, allowed him to slowly begin to reach his level of maturity. 

Furthermore, Joyce utilized the sense of sensory and tactile imagery in the short story “Araby'' to begin to demonstrate the young boy's transformation from an innocent child to an experienced young adult. At first, the young boy reaches the Bazaar with excitement, although he is met with an utterly different visual aspect than he desired it to be. “I found myself in a big hall girded at half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after a service”(4). In other words, this is proof that not all desires as a child are going to be met since as the young boy reached the bazaar it was the opposite as he imagined it to be, it was dark, quiet, and utterly empty. The boy arrived late which then took control of the aspect of his feelings and actions, he was disappointed and angry since he was late and was not able to obtain the gift he promised to buy for Mengans sister. Next, after the boy realized what was happening at the Bazaar, he was fulfilled with anger and discussed. “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity, and my eyes burned with anguish and anger”(5). Throughout all his anger and disgust feelings, the young boy had the realization that he had all these images of Mangan's sister and the Bazaar were all just illusions.  From all of his embarrassment and feeling of being ashamed, was the result of his epiphany, which changed the young innocent boy into a young adult dealing with the true realities of life. Overall, having all these impacts that the young boy faced allowed him to reach his life-changing epiphany.