“Araby” (coursepack p. 36): Study Guide Comprehension Questions
English Literature 1 Araby
1. How does religion infuse the first three paragraphs?
2. Who is the narrator? What season is it?
3. How (in what posture) does the narrator observe Mangan’s sister each morning? Who would this make her,
symbolically?
4. What is a “chalice?” What is the symbolism of his bearing “his chalice safely through a throng of foes” (paragraph 5)?
5. What is Araby? Why does it sound so exotic?
6. Why does the boy promise to bring the girl something?
7. What do we learn in 11-12 about the narrator’s home life?
8. What does the narrator have to endure while waiting for his uncle?
9. What kind of man is the uncle, apparently?
10. How does the narrator get to the bazaar? What is the imagery of his trip?
11. What is happening when he arrives at the bazaar?
12. What conversation does he overhear? What could be the symbolism of this conversation?
13. Why does he linger at the stall?
14. What is the boy’s epiphany?
Discussion Questions
1. In Joyce's “Araby” examine how money enters into the narrator’s hands and thoughts. When does money appear in the
story, and how many times is it described?
2. In what ways does money change the narrator’s relationship to Mangan’s sister? How is desire equated with money at
the end of the story, and how is the idea of the love he holds in his mind corrupted by the money he holds in his pocket?
How is money an important element of realism?
3. In what ways does this story represent, on the one hand, a realistic rendering of an adolescent boy’s infatuation for a
young girl and, on the other hand, a symbolic depiction of the passage from adolescence to manhood? Notice the ways
the story reveals the emergence of sexual desire and the narrator’s descent into a dark world of adulthood.
4. Look at the description of the boy’s departure on the train to the bazaar. What details about his solitary train ride
convey the symbolic nature of this passage from boyhood to young adulthood?
5. What symbolic elements underlie the narrator's sense of the adult world he has entered? What does the last sentence
of the story mean? What epiphany has the narrator realized?