Being a modernist writer, Joyce writes with a pessimistic undertone that modernists see as the inevitable end for everyone. In 'Araby', he uses a young child still caught in the state of childhood innocence to show a modernist's version of the "coming of age." This "coming of age" is the point in everyone's life, child or adult, when we realize that we face substantial pain and emptiness ahead.

The narrator begins the story by describing the times after supper when he and his friends would play on the streets. These nights were very gratifying for the whole group, and when t

Through the main course of the story, the narrator finds himself at the end in a hopeless state that he ignored the entire week. In fact, he sees his 'vanity' in all the hoopla he felt up to this day, when his hopes were strangled by reality. Joyce uses irony to portray the internalization of reality versus the veil his desire created.

At the end of the story, the young boy and the reader arrive at the same conclusion: that life is inevitably full of pain. This pain translates into an avoidance of others in order to escape the suffering, which leaves us feeling empty and alone in the end. The modernist solution to this end is finding pleasure, intelligence, and sanity in art. Ironically, though, artists have the highest probably of all other professions for mental instability. Therefore, Joyce creates a flawless actualization of society in the eyes of many, but his genre of literature creates a paradox for the solution that leaves the reader again searching for resolution.

When the day came for him to go, he told his uncle in the morning to remember to be home in time. But as the evening arrived and the absence of his uncle stretched further into night, he grew irritated. Finally, at eight o'clock, the uncle arrived, claiming to have forgotten. The boy took the money from his uncle and left for the train station. He arrived at the makeshift stop assembled for the bazaar.

The "blind end"(21), where the street ends, stands the inhabited two-story house. Modernists also emphasize the emptiness we find in reality. Using the vacant house at the end of the narrator's street and the dark pathway he finds himself facing at the end of the story, Joyce reveals this emptiness t

Some common words found in the essay are:
Richmond Street, , mangan's sister, brown imperturbable, inhabited two-story house, emptiness reality, inhabited two-story, two-story house, coming age, story narrator, subtextual meaning, narrator begins, pain emptiness,
Approximate Word count = 1136
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)