2007-05-14 16:18:28
来自: 柳絮翩飞
(「要读世界一流大学」)
都柏林人的评论
In literature, a symbol is a thing that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention or accidental resemblance, especially a visible sign of something invisible. [1] Sometimes, symbols are created by the artists in their works. And by using them, the artists can interpret the objective world in a subjective perspective. So symbolism is an important means for a writer to create excellent works.
As in the novel Araby, James Joyce used large amounts of symbolic imageries to create a typical setting, help the plots develop and indicate the hero’s characteristics. By analyzing the symbols in Araby, we can have a deep insight into the story and know the main theme in Dubliners better. And the symbols are as follows:
1. Blind
The North Richard Street was “blind”, and “I” used a blind to hide myself from being seen by Mangan’s sister. These are the two “blind” used in the novel.
The first one is an adjective, which means that the street is closed at one end. As it’s a blind street, people living in the street are difficult to communicate with the ones outside. So it indicates the station of un-open up of Dublin as well as Ireland. But the people living in the street are all pleased with the situation. [2] So the boy wished to get away from it. This helps the plot develop.
As for the second “blind”, it is a noun. By using the blind, Mangan’s sister couldn’t see me. However, the blind also prevented me from seeing her clearly. This indicates that the boy’s dream was only a childish dream (Mangan’s sister); it is hard to be realized for “I” only “watched it from a blind”.
2. Mangan’s sister
Mangan’s sister was the girl to whom “I” had paid lots of attention; “I” watched her secretly; “I kept her brown figure always in my eye”; and when “I” was doing stranger prayers that “I” didn’t understand, her name sprang to my lips.
These are all telling that Mangan’s sister is the boy’s dream, or his idol. But in the whole novel, the girl’s name hasn’t appeared. Why? Because what “I” know about my dream is only something superficial. My dream is just like the temple in the air, forming in the boy’s mind without any deep thinking or any deep understanding. “I” liked Mangan’s sister just as I liked The Memoirs of Vidocq, a book I found in the priest’s remains---“I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow.”
This agrees with the boy’s age and his experience. He was a boy on the way of growing up and forming his own views of the society. But he was still too young to have a good understanding of the real world. Although we know that his dream could be easily broken, the most important thing is that he had a dream. This is also important for the Irishmen who were under the control of the British government then.
3. The North Richmond Street
The street was blind. Besides, the surroundings were all unpleasant. My house was full of “musty air”. The houses in the street “had grown sombre”. When my aunt and “I” went marketing, we were “jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curse…”
As James Joyce said, the main theme of the novels in Dubliners was paralysis. And the condition of the North Richmond Street was a good proof for it. But in the whole Ireland as well, all the streets were almost the same. So Joyce turned to voluntary-exile to get rid of the unpleasant thing in Ireland. So do the boy in the novel. He had a strong hatred for the street, as is demonstrated by the sentence “I was thankful that I could see (the street) so little.”
So the street was a symbol for the whole Ireland.
4. Araby
In the novel, the word “Araby” plays an important role, as it is the title word. And Araby is “a splendid bazaar” where Mangan’s sister recommended me to go.
Araby is an old name for Arab. Besides, in the novel, it “cast an Eastern enchantment over me”. So Araby is a place with the Oriental fragrance in Dublin. And we can also see that the boy had a strong desire to make a trip there. So we can conclude that Araby is a dream new world for the boy, as Mangan’s sister is a fairy who guild the boy there.
However, it seems that the other people, especially the elder people living in the street paid little attention to my desire. And my uncle just “answered me curtly” when “I” told him my plan to Araby. And he also went home too late that night to let me go to Araby on time. So this indicates again that Dubliners as well as the Irishmen were all paralyzed. They paid little attention to their dreams. [3] And they were well intentioned but narrow in the views and blind to higher values. This is what Joyce felt disappointed of.
To our delight, my aunt indeed cared about my wish for Araby and blamed my uncle for being late. This shows that Joyce want to hold his wish for the future of Ireland. And when “I” got a florin from my uncle, “I” went to Araby immediately. However on my way there, the condition seemed to be a bit unpleasant. The train was “deserted”, “bare” and it had “an intolerable delay”. Even when the train started “slowly”, “it crept onward among ruinous houses”. These all indicate the difficulties one will confront on his way to the dream place. But anyhow at last “I” arrived at Araby late at night.
But Araby, the dream new world for the boy, turned out to be “darkness” and “silence”. And the people who served me at the stall spoke to her customer “out of a sense of duty”. This all disappointed me.
And there is a casual dialogue between two men and a woman in the novel. This dialogue had no special setting or surprising ending, but it was so real that when we read the words, we can imagine the scene in our mind. [4] But it is the dialogue, in addition with the other things the boy met in Araby, that disappointed me. So this is an allusion of the life of the young adults in Dublin who own the characteristic of ignorance and conventionalism.
One the whole, the bazaar Araby indicates that even when the Irishmen were chasing their dream, they would be disappointed just because of their own society and their blind to the bright future. So Joyce became sad about the reality.
5. The priest
At the beginning of the novel, we know that a priest had been a tenant of the boy’s home. “He (the priest) had been a very charitable priest”, and he “had left all his money to the institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister”. So in this way, the priest was indeed a good citizen of Dublin.
Besides, form the names of the books that “I” found, (The Abbot, The Devout Communicant and The Memoirs of Vidocq), of which one is about religion and two are about exploration, we can see that the priest was also an imaginative person. So he had given his life to both piety and flights of imaginations.
However, the priest had gone, just like his “rusty bicycle-pump”, deserted and forgotten by other Dubliners. If all the good citizens had all gone away, how could Dublin be a good city? So the priest is a symbol of ht vital past, a contrast to the “blind” and paralyzed present. It tells us that the freedom of the Ireland has gone and people then had no passion for a bright future.
On the other hand, the priest was also a symbol for religion belief because of his special status. In fact from the analysis before, we know that the priest was a man full of imagination. But in fact, a priest should be conventional. So this imaginative priest indicates Joyce’s doubt of the belief of Catholicism. [5]
6. Other subtle Symbols
Besides the major symbols in Araby, there are still some subtle ones that could not be ignored.
At the beginning of the novel, we can see “a central apple tree” in a “wild garden behind the house”. On seeing the words “Apple tree”, we can immediately think of the myth between Adam and Swan in the Garden of Eden. In this novel, the apple tree id a symbol for the boy’s first love as well as a wish to try something new. [5] But the tree was in a “wild garden behind the house”. The condition was so oppressed that the tree might not grow up robustly. This means that a trial for a new thing wasn’t encouraged by the Irish society, and the boy’s love towards Mangan’s sister couldn’t breed some results.
Also at the beginning, “light form the kitchen windows had filled the areas”. (There are also some other descriptions of the light, such as “Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed over me.”) From the analysis before, we know that the dark blind street is a symbol for Ireland. So here the light becomes a symbol for the country’s future. However, the light was from the kitchen window. How dim, how subtle! So Joyce here indicates the gloomy future for his own country.
Besides, the “chalice” is mentioned when “I” went marketing with my aunt: “I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through the throng of foes.” Here the “chalice” is a symbol for the belief of Catholicism.
James Joyce is famous for the using of “stream of consciousness” method in his works. But he is also good at setting proper background, creating symbols and using allusions. From the novel Araby, we can see a lot of symbols were created by Joyce and they located everywhere in the texts.
However different people will read Joyce’s works form different perspective. So all the symbols listed above are just my own understanding of the novel Araby with the help of my teacher Miss Gao Fen and the works listed below. And I want to quote Professor Derek Attridge’s words to end my paper: “Joyce’s writing can reveal sources of fascination and exhilaration which you were not expecting to find, and if you feel at times that Joyce is laughing at you just as much as you are laughing at him, you have begun to appreciate the delightfully unsettling energies of his art.”
Notes:
[1]：邓绪新，英语文学概论，武汉：武汉大学出版社，2002 P155-158
[2]：张秀清，《现实与梦想的差距——〈阿拉比〉的现实主义与象征主义双重层面解读》，福建行政学院福建经济管理干部学院学报，2004年增刊，P 160-162
[3]: 张建军,《从无知朦胧走向成熟--谈〈阿拉比〉中的象征主义手法》，江苏教育学院学报(社会科学版)，2004年l1月，P107—108
[4]：戴从容，乔伊斯小说的形式实验，北京：中国戏剧出版社，2005，P42-43
[5]：李漫萍，《寓意隽永的象征— 试论乔伊斯短篇小说的象征艺术》，广东教育学院学报，P27-31：2002年 11月
Works cited:
[1]: the textbook of our course.
[2]: 詹姆斯 乔伊斯[爱尔兰]著，孙梁等译：都柏林人，上海：上海译文出版社，1984
[3]: Derek Attridge, The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce, Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2000
都柏林人的评论
In literature, a symbol is a thing that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention or accidental resemblance, especially a visible sign of something invisible. [1] Sometimes, symbols are created by the artists in their works. And by using them, the artists can interpret the objective world in a subjective perspective. So symbolism is an important means for a writer to create excellent works.
As in the novel Araby, James Joyce used large amounts of symbolic imageries to create a typical setting, help the plots develop and indicate the hero’s characteristics. By analyzing the symbols in Araby, we can have a deep insight into the story and know the main theme in Dubliners better. And the symbols are as follows:
1. Blind
The North Richard Street was “blind”, and “I” used a blind to hide myself from being seen by Mangan’s sister. These are the two “blind” used in the novel.
The first one is an adjective, which means that the street is closed at one end. As it’s a blind street, people living in the street are difficult to communicate with the ones outside. So it indicates the station of un-open up of Dublin as well as Ireland. But the people living in the street are all pleased with the situation. [2] So the boy wished to get away from it. This helps the plot develop.
As for the second “blind”, it is a noun. By using the blind, Mangan’s sister couldn’t see me. However, the blind also prevented me from seeing her clearly. This indicates that the boy’s dream was only a childish dream (Mangan’s sister); it is hard to be realized for “I” only “watched it from a blind”.
2. Mangan’s sister
Mangan’s sister was the girl to whom “I” had paid lots of attention; “I” watched her secretly; “I kept her brown figure always in my eye”; and when “I” was doing stranger prayers that “I” didn’t understand, her name sprang to my lips.
These are all telling that Mangan’s sister is the boy’s dream, or his idol. But in the whole novel, the girl’s name hasn’t appeared. Why? Because what “I” know about my dream is only something superficial. My dream is just like the temple in the air, forming in the boy’s mind without any deep thinking or any deep understanding. “I” liked Mangan’s sister just as I liked The Memoirs of Vidocq, a book I found in the priest’s remains---“I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow.”
This agrees with the boy’s age and his experience. He was a boy on the way of growing up and forming his own views of the society. But he was still too young to have a good understanding of the real world. Although we know that his dream could be easily broken, the most important thing is that he had a dream. This is also important for the Irishmen who were under the control of the British government then.
3. The North Richmond Street
The street was blind. Besides, the surroundings were all unpleasant. My house was full of “musty air”. The houses in the street “had grown sombre”. When my aunt and “I” went marketing, we were “jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curse…”
As James Joyce said, the main theme of the novels in Dubliners was paralysis. And the condition of the North Richmond Street was a good proof for it. But in the whole Ireland as well, all the streets were almost the same. So Joyce turned to voluntary-exile to get rid of the unpleasant thing in Ireland. So do the boy in the novel. He had a strong hatred for the street, as is demonstrated by the sentence “I was thankful that I could see (the street) so little.”
So the street was a symbol for the whole Ireland.
4. Araby
In the novel, the word “Araby” plays an important role, as it is the title word. And Araby is “a splendid bazaar” where Mangan’s sister recommended me to go.
Araby is an old name for Arab. Besides, in the novel, it “cast an Eastern enchantment over me”. So Araby is a place with the Oriental fragrance in Dublin. And we can also see that the boy had a strong desire to make a trip there. So we can conclude that Araby is a dream new world for the boy, as Mangan’s sister is a fairy who guild the boy there.
However, it seems that the other people, especially the elder people living in the street paid little attention to my desire. And my uncle just “answered me curtly” when “I” told him my plan to Araby. And he also went home too late that night to let me go to Araby on time. So this indicates again that Dubliners as well as the Irishmen were all paralyzed. They paid little attention to their dreams. [3] And they were well intentioned but narrow in the views and blind to higher values. This is what Joyce felt disappointed of.
To our delight, my aunt indeed cared about my wish for Araby and blamed my uncle for being late. This shows that Joyce want to hold his wish for the future of Ireland. And when “I” got a florin from my uncle, “I” went to Araby immediately. However on my way there, the condition seemed to be a bit unpleasant. The train was “deserted”, “bare” and it had “an intolerable delay”. Even when the train started “slowly”, “it crept onward among ruinous houses”. These all indicate the difficulties one will confront on his way to the dream place. But anyhow at last “I” arrived at Araby late at night.
But Araby, the dream new world for the boy, turned out to be “darkness” and “silence”. And the people who served me at the stall spoke to her customer “out of a sense of duty”. This all disappointed me.
And there is a casual dialogue between two men and a woman in the novel. This dialogue had no special setting or surprising ending, but it was so real that when we read the words, we can imagine the scene in our mind. [4] But it is the dialogue, in addition with the other things the boy met in Araby, that disappointed me. So this is an allusion of the life of the young adults in Dublin who own the characteristic of ignorance and conventionalism.
One the whole, the bazaar Araby indicates that even when the Irishmen were chasing their dream, they would be disappointed just because of their own society and their blind to the bright future. So Joyce became sad about the reality.
5. The priest
At the beginning of the novel, we know that a priest had been a tenant of the boy’s home. “He (the priest) had been a very charitable priest”, and he “had left all his money to the institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister”. So in this way, the priest was indeed a good citizen of Dublin.
Besides, form the names of the books that “I” found, (The Abbot, The Devout Communicant and The Memoirs of Vidocq), of which one is about religion and two are about exploration, we can see that the priest was also an imaginative person. So he had given his life to both piety and flights of imaginations.
However, the priest had gone, just like his “rusty bicycle-pump”, deserted and forgotten by other Dubliners. If all the good citizens had all gone away, how could Dublin be a good city? So the priest is a symbol of ht vital past, a contrast to the “blind” and paralyzed present. It tells us that the freedom of the Ireland has gone and people then had no passion for a bright future.
On the other hand, the priest was also a symbol for religion belief because of his special status. In fact from the analysis before, we know that the priest was a man full of imagination. But in fact, a priest should be conventional. So this imaginative priest indicates Joyce’s doubt of the belief of Catholicism. [5]
6. Other subtle Symbols
Besides the major symbols in Araby, there are still some subtle ones that could not be ignored.
At the beginning of the novel, we can see “a central apple tree” in a “wild garden behind the house”. On seeing the words “Apple tree”, we can immediately think of the myth between Adam and Swan in the Garden of Eden. In this novel, the apple tree id a symbol for the boy’s first love as well as a wish to try something new. [5] But the tree was in a “wild garden behind the house”. The condition was so oppressed that the tree might not grow up robustly. This means that a trial for a new thing wasn’t encouraged by the Irish society, and the boy’s love towards Mangan’s sister couldn’t breed some results.
Also at the beginning, “light form the kitchen windows had filled the areas”. (There are also some other descriptions of the light, such as “Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed over me.”) From the analysis before, we know that the dark blind street is a symbol for Ireland. So here the light becomes a symbol for the country’s future. However, the light was from the kitchen window. How dim, how subtle! So Joyce here indicates the gloomy future for his own country.
Besides, the “chalice” is mentioned when “I” went marketing with my aunt: “I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through the throng of foes.” Here the “chalice” is a symbol for the belief of Catholicism.
James Joyce is famous for the using of “stream of consciousness” method in his works. But he is also good at setting proper background, creating symbols and using allusions. From the novel Araby, we can see a lot of symbols were created by Joyce and they located everywhere in the texts.
However different people will read Joyce’s works form different perspective. So all the symbols listed above are just my own understanding of the novel Araby with the help of my teacher Miss Gao Fen and the works listed below. And I want to quote Professor Derek Attridge’s words to end my paper: “Joyce’s writing can reveal sources of fascination and exhilaration which you were not expecting to find, and if you feel at times that Joyce is laughing at you just as much as you are laughing at him, you have begun to appreciate the delightfully unsettling energies of his art.”
Notes:
[1]：邓绪新，英语文学概论，武汉：武汉大学出版社，2002 P155-158
[2]：张秀清，《现实与梦想的差距——〈阿拉比〉的现实主义与象征主义双重层面解读》，福建行政学院福建经济管理干部学院学报，2004年增刊，P 160-162
[3]: 张建军,《从无知朦胧走向成熟--谈〈阿拉比〉中的象征主义手法》，江苏教育学院学报(社会科学版)，2004年l1月，P107—108
[4]：戴从容，乔伊斯小说的形式实验，北京：中国戏剧出版社，2005，P42-43
[5]：李漫萍，《寓意隽永的象征— 试论乔伊斯短篇小说的象征艺术》，广东教育学院学报，P27-31：2002年 11月
Works cited:
[1]: the textbook of our course.
[2]: 詹姆斯 乔伊斯[爱尔兰]著，孙梁等译：都柏林人，上海：上海译文出版社，1984
[3]: Derek Attridge, The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce, Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2000
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在哪儿买这本书? · · · · · ·
>都柏林人
2008-04-09 11:30:10 赵五
PERFECT!2008-05-12 00:41:11 zhenya
你的英文真好啊 写得很详细2008-05-13 14:29:13 柳絮翩飞
谢谢。哈哈。其实我觉得自己写得很一般，因为有些东西是借鉴了别人的解读所写出来的。2008-06-30 20:00:42 开心
quite good. But what about the religional symbol of the araby? Do you have any idea?2008-06-30 20:57:05 开心
sorry, it should be "religious symbol".2009-01-03 17:01:51 maomao
Hi~Are u a student of English Literature?
2009-05-03 17:13:51 Amy
On the whole, I think this essay is quiet good with clear structure and lots of evidence. However, I don't quite agree with your analysis of the priest. By saying "(the priest) had been a very charitable priest" and he “had left all his money to the institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister", James Joyce did not aim to tell that the priest was "a good citizen of Dublin",rahter, he portrayed him in a somewhat sarcastic tone, implying the corruption of Catholicism. Here we sould pay our attention to the words"charitable" and "money". A priest tended to be charitable and should not be a very rich man. Though the amount of money was not told, we should aware that when it worthed being mentioned it must carry specal meaning. Therefore, we should think about where and how the priest got his "money" and which, in certain aspect, contrasts to his life seen as "charitable". This contrast strenghtens the ironic effect of the priest, that is, he appeared to be a pious and chatitable priest but in fact, he was not. And with this ironic depiction of the priest, James Joyce intended to reveal the corruption of Catholicism.This is my interpretation of "the priest" in this story.
2009-06-11 14:32:50 Gwendolyn
yeah, the character of the priest is a little bit ironic actually.2009-06-11 15:40:18 柳絮翩飞
Thank you very much, Amy and Gwendolyn.It has been a long time since I wrote this essay. I wrote it when I was a sophomore student. As I read more and more articles about James, I realise the sarcasms in his writing. So now I agree with you two on this point.
Hopefully the readers would also read Amy's reply.
2009-07-22 05:26:53 西木的风
Nicely written, though there're a few minor errors..But anyway, anyone who's interested and spends time on such a great book is worth praising!
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