Some Notes, Pre-Writing
AP FRQ (Free-Response Question) on Dubliners
“Araby”
Task: Analyze diction and imagery in relation to a theme of the story as a whole.
1. Decide: what is a theme of the story?
When adoration is superficial, it quickly ceases. The paragraph in question is before the
reality of the bazaar and all its superficiality hits him – the fact that the clerks are British and
not Eastern. The paragraph also comes after promising Mangan’s sister he’d go to the bazaar
and bring her something. It was so much better and more enchanting before they spoke.
At the end of the story, though, he sees it all as foolish – his epiphany – perhaps fostering
the theme that part of growing up is having the ability to see yourself? Fall from innocence?
See Garden of Eden reference in the 2nd paragraph.
Brainstorming for opening paragraph:
Falling in love for the first time is a multi-sensory experience – the feelings, the
sounds, and the sights are all acutely palpable. The one with the crush is flush with
optimism and impatience, especially if he is the sensitive adolescent boy in James
Joyce’s Araby who is so utterly observant and spiritual that his voyeurism becomes
noble until he realizes that he is a “creature driven and derided by vanity.” He fails in
his quest because it was based on false pretenses.
References to seeing in the paragraph – staring, saw, looked, seeing nothing but – relates to
the theme of the story as a whole…
Diction: Choosing mounted the staircase and gained the upper part of the house reminds me
that the speaker was on a quest. He mounts the staircase, like a gallant knight. Mount
(ascend), gained (reached).
Here diction and imagery work together:
The high cold empty gloomy rooms – the word choice speaks to what he sees [high] feels
[cold] sees [empty] and feels [gloomy]. It’s a multi-sensory experience in which he feels
liberated, going from room to room singing. Yet, it’s an ironic response to feel liberated by
those four adjectives! This furthers the characterization of a young boy in the throes of
infatuation.
Religious imagery:
He will eventually realize that his feelings and attempts to win her are vain because he writes
that it’s his “imagination” which has created this Virgin Mary-figure who is clad in brown,
her neck curved, and “touched” (a spiritual description) by light, giving her an angelic halo.
He sees nothing but the figure cast by his imagination. But she is not even really there at that
moment.
Imagery: Again, the paragraph is a multi-sensory experience. He stares at the clock and hears
its ticking. He looks out the window at his friends playing, hears their cries, and feels the
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cool glass against his forehead. Sees her dark house. Even his imagination is full of very
specific, tactile images such as the border below the dress – not just the dress but the border
below it.
Notice he doesn’t write “her dress” either – here he uses the article the rather than a
personal pronoun: the curved neck, the hand, the railings, the border, the dress. Perhaps this
is the beginning of his realization that she – whom he doesn’t even know – doesn’t exist. So
much of what we believe (or want to believe), upon closer examination, is false.
“Eveline”
Modernist writer, James Joyce, in his short story Eveline tells the story of a nineteen-year-old
young woman on the brink of the most important decision of her life thus far: to leave
behind her life of “commonplace sacrifices” or “escape” that life to Buenos Aires with a
lover. Much of the story is told stream-of-consciousness, not through the voice of Eveline
herself, but through Joyce as the third-person narrator. His careful manipulation of diction
and syntax in the first and last paragraphs serves to introduce and conclude the helpless tone
of the piece as well as convey the theme: a sense of duty and resolve to cling to the past are
what paralyze Eveline.
Task: Joyce’s careful manipulation of diction and syntax serves to introduce and
conclude both the tone and theme of the story.
What is the theme? Eveline’s (unwarranted?) sense of duty and resolve to cling to the
past are what paralyze her (literally and figuratively).
Tone of the piece: distressed, anguished, apathetic, meek, resigned
Hopeless, helpless tone about the piece – the stream-of-consciousness in the bulk of the
piece mirrors her distress and anguish as she questions herself and remembers the past. She
lives in the past, duty-bound to her dead mother – she made a promise to her mother to
keep the home together – and is duty-bound to her sometimes violent, always intimidating
father.
Joyce writes, “As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother’s life laid its spell on the very
quick of her being – that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness” (40).
‘Commonplace sacrifices’ (as familiar as the dusty curtains) keep Eveline trapped like a
‘helpless animal.’
Joyce’s syntax: The passive voice in the first paragraph represents the passivity of Eveline.
The last line sits by itself: “She was tired.” It’s as though it were exhausting for him to write
the three-word line. And what a tiresome life she leads: a life of hard work.
Passive voice: Her head was leaned – Joyce doesn’t give her action. She sits watching.
Joyce’s characters are watching, not doing. Syntax mirrors theme. The central theme seems
to be paralysis, as many critics have suggested, which is concluded in the last paragraph.
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Diction: The evening invades the avenue. Joyce chooses the verb invade rather than enter,
for example. To Eveline, the outside world is dangerous. She even has to elbow her way
through crowds (38) just to do her marketing.
Syntax: In the last paragraph, Frank rushes beyond the barrier and calls to her, but she sets
her face to him (41). Her eyes do not even move. The rhetorical effect of polysyndeton in
the last sentence elongates and concludes the hopeless tone of the piece: Her eyes gave him
no sign of love or farewell or recognition. Perhaps she was too tired?
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