Topic > Analysis of Joyce's Story: A Boy's First Love

The story of a shy boy's first unrequited love may seem boring; however, Arabia proves different. The subtle explosions of love, frustration and hope are captured and framed in Arabia. James Joyce lights up a monotonous topic by conveying a stream of images to the reader. Joyce's use of metaphors that contrast depending on the situation, the foreshadowing caused by the deceased priest and the books, and the differentiation of syntax effectively summarize to captivate readers with the raw emotions of first love. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Metaphors are a vague detail that readers notice; however, the choice of comparisons is crucial in shaping the intensity of the love and the tone of the story. One such use of metaphors is the contrasting correlations created within the story. This contrast manifests the girl as a shining light in the narrator's dark life. Metaphors related to Mangan's sister tend to be elegant while other metaphors are crude. For example, his neighborhood is personified as a street with houses that “looked at each other with unperturbed brown faces.” The people at the market are represented as “a crowd of enemies” walking on “flaming streets.” On the other hand, the girl's actions are “like fingers running over [the harp] strings” and her name alone was “like a summons.” The myriad of similes, personifications, and metaphors ultimately divide into figures of speech praising the girl and negatively connoted comparisons to show the rest of the narrator's life. These contrasting figures of speech represent how the narrator sees the girl as an enlightening presence compared to other aspects of his life. The divergent metaphors show the intensity of the narrator's love, but the absence of metaphors also shows an aspect of the tone of the story. Araby begins with a moderate use of metaphors, used mostly to set the story's setting. For example, the pages of the book are described as “leaves” and the street lamps “raise their faint lanterns.” Deeper in the plot, when the narrator is overwhelmed by love, Joyce uses majestic metaphors to set the tone based on a boy's experience of first love. Yet from then on any sign of simile, hyperbole or personification is absent. As the narrator immerses himself in achieving a goal, Joyce frees the story from excessive figures of speech, just as the narrator frees himself from other details of his life, giving him the favor done to him by his puppy love. Joyce moderates his use of metaphors based on the tone the plot sets. All in all, metaphors help convey emotions to the reader by emphasizing feelings of love and furthering the tone of the story. Although technical rhetoric enters into the theme of the story, the foreshadowing of the priest and the books help build the theme of the story. first love in Arabia. A notable case of foreshadowing is the deceased priest. The death of the priest predicts the failure of the boy's fantasized love story. A priest is a being who is supposed to connect heaven and man. They are responsible for performing sacred rituals to worship deities. In the context of Arabia, we can see the girl as a celestial presence. This hypothesis can be guaranteed by the fact that the narrator pronounces his name “at that moment in strange prayers”. Assuming that the girl is a celestial presence and that the narrator is a believer, a priest should connect these two figures. The priest is supposed to represent love, a complete relationship between the girl and the.