Countless stories of all genres don’t have a concrete ending or have many possible interpretations. Some might be intended by the author and some might be very unobvious. Either way, these stories give the reader the opportunity or the assignment to come to a conclusion themselves. The following story is one of those, but I will add some possible interpretations afterwards.

James Joyce
James Joyce, or James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, was born on February 2nd 1882 in Dublin, Ireland. As the oldest of 10 children, he was born to an alcoholic father who led the family to slowly drift into poverty and forced James Joyce to educate himself for two years of his childhood. In 1893 he was admitted to Belverde College in Dublin where he was very successful until he left the school because he had lost his Roman Catholic faith. At the University College in Dublin, Joyce later studied languages and took part in the Literary and Historical Society of the College. His first publishment in 1900 was his review of the play “When We Dead Awaken” and it appeared in the London Fortnightly Review. During his lifetime, Joyce went on to write numerous novels and became known for not sticking to the conventional rules of literature but exploring different ways. James Joyce died on January 13th 1941 in Zurich, Switzerland.

Summary
Araby is about a young boy living in North Dublin, talking about his life on the street he grew up in. He remembers the priest who died in the house that he lives in now and how he played with his friends on the street. There is one girl that the boy only watches from afar, the sister of his friend Mangan. When she walks out of the house to call for the boy’s friend, he is in awe of her. He watches her every morning and follows her down the street. Even though they are barely in contact, the boy dreams of her every second of the day but is terrified of actually speaking to her. One day, Mangan’s sister comes up to the boy and asks him if he is going to Araby, a local bazaar in Dublin. Because she can’t go herself, the narrator, after having calmed down, offers to bring her something. The next days he can’t focus on anything else than the bazaar and sees anything that doesn’t involve Mangan’s sister as a waste of time. When the day comes the boy informs his uncle again so that he would come home on time and give him money to take the train to the bazaar. Nonetheless, the uncle comes home late at 9 p.m. and when he arrives he starts telling the boy the lines of a poem. The boy leaves right away and since the trains drive very slowly he arrives at the bazaar at 10 p.m., right as it’s starting to close. He wants to buy something but feels judged and gives up, standing in the middle of the bazaar.

For the original story, click here! https://www.plato-philosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Araby.pdf

The story is often analyzed as a presentation of the lack of love in society. It suggests that the boy is left behind empty because he can’t fulfil his wish for love and new experiences. This absence of love makes them anonymous, which is why neither of them has been given a name. The story ends with a sad epiphany for the boy that his attempt at love has failed. A separate angle of interpretation would be that his obsession with Mangan’s sister distracts him so much from everything else, that nothing seems to work out. When we only focus on one thing in our life, that might not even be reachable, it’s not likely to work out and we always need balance.

I hope you liked this story and might even do some further research about James Joyce’s works!