Story Map

1. Setting: on North Richmond Street in Dublin, Ireland in the winter.
2. Protagonist: the narrator
3. Problem: The narrator contends with environmental forces that inhibit and oppress him and other Dubliners. These forces include adverse economic, social, and cultural conditions arising from British dominance of Ireland. He also struggles against lustful feelings toward the Mangan girl, feelings that his religion tells him he must control.
4. Resolution: Araby is closing down as he arrives, the boy overhears a trite conversation between an English girl working at the bazaar and two young men, and he suddenly realizes that he has been confusing things. It dawns on him that the bazaar, which he thought would be so exotic and exciting, is really only a commercialized place to buy things. Furthermore, he now realizes that Mangan's sister is just a girl who will not care whether he fulfills his promise to buy her something at the bazaar. His conversation with Mangan's sister, during which he promised he would buy her something, was really only small talk--as meaningless as the one between the English girl and her companions. He leaves Araby feeling ashamed and upset. This epiphany signals a change in the narrator--from an innocent, idealistic boy to an adolescent dealing with harsh realities. Although he has been an adult now, we still can find a contradiction in his heart that he was failed to deal with it, which lead to the unforgettable pain he used to suffer.
5. Episodes: 1) The narrator, who remains unnamed throughout the story, lives with his aunt and uncle. He describes his block, then discusses the former tenant who lived in his house: a priest who recently died in the back room. This priest has a library that attracts the young narrator, and he is particularly interested in three titles: a Sir Walter Scott romance, a religious tract, and a police agent's memoirs.
2) The narrator talks about being a part of the group of boys who play in the street. He then introduces Mangan's sister, a girl who captivates his imagination even though he rarely, if ever, speaks with her. He does stare at her from his window and follow her on the street, however, often thinking of her "even in places the most hostile to romance." He becomes misty-eyed just at the thought of her and retreats to the priest's dark room in order to deprive himself of other senses and think only of her. 3) Mangan's sister speaks to him. She asks if he will be attending a church-sponsored fair that is coming soon to Dublin--a bazaar called "Araby." He is tongue-tied and cannot answer, but when she tells him that she cannot go because of a retreat that week in her convent, he promises to go and bring her a gift from the bazaar. 4) When the narrator is disillusioned by what he finds at the bazaar and then he realizes that life in Dublin is humdrum and that the Mangan girl probably has no romantic interest in him. The thought that she was attracted to him was a result of his vanity, he believes.
6. Response: If I didn’t know the background about this short story, I would consider it as a boy’s upbringing. I was moved by the love that the boy showed to the girl. It reminded me of the things that happened before. A very excellent boy, he always goes through my classroom door and the canteen. I want to know him but I didn’t have enough courage. Finally, when we had to graduate, I gave him a book, it was my diary about him. Then three years later, we still didn’t get in touch with each other. Fortunately, he is still very excellent and I am no longer obsessed with him, too.
After I read this story carefully, I was a little confused but I can clearly feel that the narrator has a kind of disillusionment. On the one hand is the new world that he longing for is actually presented to a dilapidated scene and he is very disappointed. On the other hand, his new world has isolated him out, and eventually shut him up which made his dream broken. But I don’t know which sense of loss covers a great part of the story or in the boy’s heart even if he is an adult now.