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Champa to Rasik: >The narrative slips into the first person after the initial "we". A >sentence that follows the boy finding paper-covered books and the late >tenant's rusty bicycle-pump (do you see any symbolism, here, Maureen?), >reads: "He had been a charitable priest; in his will he had left all his >money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister." >How doe the boy know that? The omniscient voice is a little unexpected >and jarring, to me. Do you agree? - Rasik, the 'we' to 'I' could be read as a coming of age type of thing for the boy. Once he had direct contact with her, he begins to feel alienated from his usual group, his school, his frinds and the usual games they play which begins to seem silly to him now. And so he's more aware of himself. The part about the priest's will - is he looking back as an adult? and so that would make sense? The rusty pump could also mean the priest's loss of faith in the church and thus the life he dedicated to it is now sort of become useless? I keep being drawn to the message of Joyce's religious belief or dis-belief had a large part to play in the narrative. He carried her image as a chalice - does this not signify communion which is so important to catholics? The reason too why it is not just a love story is that he never describes her face - we see nothing of her, other than the way she stands and the emotions she raises in him. Maureen I believe one needs to know a little background of chritianity to really understand Joyce or at least this story. I struggle with O'Connor the same way - I am not always quite sure what she is saying and when you read about her personal religious belief, things start to fall in place a little better. I still have not figured out The River for this reason! Rushdie too = I am always amazed how anyone can nderstand all the insinuations if you don't have 'insider' information such as the meaning of Chamcha? Maybe he does sort of explain it I don't remember. Chandra answers: The reason why the face of the girl is never described could be that it does not really matter. The boy could be in love with the idea of love, could have loved any girl because he was in that age. Therefore the girl remains faceless. It is a one-sided love story, perhaps it is better to say that it is story of becoming an adult as Maureen put it. It reminds me to some extent of the turmoil the boy in "The infinite plan" (Isabel Allende) goes through. Rajeev Vinaik comments: As to Joyce seeing sex all over the place, I do not see why not. The tale is of guilt due to sexual desire after all. But there were two things which fed my mind in the story. There seemed to be a contradiction in the opening two sentances of Araby, "North Richmond Street, being blind, was a..." is the first part of the first sentance. "An uninhabited house of two stories stood at the blind end..." is how the latter uncurls. "....at the blind end...[?]," hang on; did he not just write the street per se was blind? He did indeed, and either he made a mistake in his editing hey authors are but personnes at the end of the day ) or there is an interpretation the young Joyce wanted us to find. Maybe the clue is in "...house of two stories..." (emp. mine hardly suprisingly ). |
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