Renan Tafur
Professor Rosemary Dineen
ENG 102.0817
April 24, 2006 (in time)
Essay 2: Draft Two
Imaginative Worlds
In the stories, “Araby” by James Joyce, and “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield
we can see that the characters have many things in common. One of them is their
immense imagination. Imagination and disillusion played a big role in these stories
because it shaped the way these two characters live, and it explains the way their feelings
are changed abruptly by the end of the stories.
We can even come to the conclusion that the two main characters of each story live in an
unreal world since their points of view are extremely different from that of reality. They
might be using their imagination in order to escape from their boring and unfulfilling
lives.
In the story by Mansfield we can see that he is trying to depict the life of a lonely
aging woman. Miss Brill is a misplaced character; she has no friends and no relationships
whatsoever. Miss Brill finds an opening to her isolation in other things, such as being
involved with as many lives as she can. Miss Brill can be described as a person that is
living on a fantasy world, which she has created to make herself feel better. Miss Brill
enjoys her usual outings to hear the band play and soak in the atmosphere, but most of all
she relishes the chance to sit in on the lives of others by listening and watching.
Mansfield's "Miss Brill" illustrates the old woman's attempt to ease loneliness by creating
an alternative reality for her; this can be proven in the eighth paragraph as she starts to
completely lose her sense of reality, “Oh, how fascinating it was! How she enjoyed it!
How she loved sitting here, watching it all! It was like a play. It was exactly like a play.
Who could believe the sky at the back wasn’t painted? …Even she had a part and came
every Sunday. No doubt someone would have noticed if she hadn’t come there; she was
part of the performance after all.” This lines show how Miss Brill is desperately trying to
find a meaning to her uninteresting life. She is trying to make herself believe that she is
important and that she is a vital part on everyone’s lives, but in reality she is insignificant
and no one seems to care about her. The protagonist of “Araby” also deals with the same
problem as he puts all of his emphasis into meaningless things. The narrator of this story
also has severe problems with the way he perceives reality and the events that occurred
around him. He also seems to be living in an unreal world as he accommodates the events
that surrounded him in an optimistic way to make himself seem more important. This can
be seen on the ninth paragraph, “What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and
sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I
chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom
her image came between me and the page I strove to read. The syllables of the word
Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an
Eastern enchantment over me. ” This lines show how the protagonist becomes obsessed
over an insignificant meeting with Mangon’s sister, the girls is just being friendly and
polite to him, but the narrator misinterprets this and his crush towards Mangon’s sister
grows to a ridiculous level.
The lives of these two characters are also related since they have to face an abrupt
change to their imaginative ideal world, when they see their illusions and self-respect be
crushed with a few words and actions. In the case of “Miss Brill” we can see how the few
words of a young couple break the defense mechanism that Miss Brill has created for
herself to avoid being humiliated and feeling unimportant. This can be seen on the tenth
paragraph, “But why? Because of that stupid old thing at the end there?” asked the boy.
“Why does she come here at all-who wants her? Why doesn’t she keep her silly old mug
at home?” “It’s her fu-ur which is so funny,” giggled the girl. “It’s exactly like a fried
whiting.” The words of that couple forced Miss Brill to realize that she is not an
important part of the crowd that surrounds her, the ideal world that she has created for
herself to cope with her loneliness has crashed down, and now she has to face reality. The
same thing happens in the story of “Araby” This can be seen in the last two paragraphs,
“I heard a voice call from the one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part
of the hall was now completely dark. Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a
creature driven and derived by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” This
lines show how the protagonist dreams have come to an end, he believes that he might
not have another chance to approach the girl of his dreams. His imaginative world has
been destroyed by his invalidity to buy the girl of his dream a simple present.
These two stories correlate in two important ways. As we can see that both
characters live in an imaginative world which they have created for themselves in order
to make their lives more pleasing. Miss Brill seems to be the one that suffers the most,
since throughout her story she is trying to make herself seem important but thanks to her
“hero and heroine” she realized that her presence is not considered significant by any
means and that she was just like those people she mocked. The protagonist of “Araby”
suffered the same path as at the end of his story his not able to get the present which
could have made him approach the girl of his obsessions.