A Literary Analysis of the Religious Symbols in Araby by James Joyce Essay

James Joyce's use of religious imagery and religious symbols in "Araby" is compelling. That the story is concerned somehow with religion is obvious, but the particulars are vague, and its message becomes all the more interesting when Joyce begins to mingle romantic attraction with divine love. "Araby" is a story about both wordly love and religious devotion, and its weird mix of symbols and images details the relationship--sometimes peaceful, sometimes tumultuos--between the two. In this essay, I will examine a few key moments in the story and argue that Joyce's narrator is ultimately unable to resolve the differences between them. While the story's concern with religion seems to speak for itself, a few biographical details bout Joyce's own youth and his religious background help inform any reading of "Araby." We know that he was both drawn to and repulsed by the Catholic church in Ireland, and that just before taking orders, he opted to give up a life in the church and chose instead to devote himself to writing fiction. In the end, Joyce saw the church as something confining, something that imposed rules rather than freeing a creative spirit. As a writer radically inclined to break the rules even of fiction, the rules of the church were too severe for him. We also know that Joyce was a very sensual person who wanted nothing to do with celibacy or abstinance his youthful marauding in the brothels of Dublin suggests that the church's proscriptions of sexual, or even romantic, activity were also too much for him. Some of these issues show up early on in the story "Araby." To begin with, the narrator--the voice of a young Joyce, surely, if not entirely autobiographical--lives in a house whose former tenant was a priest who had "died in the back drawing room" (40). The narrator also tells us, in the first sentence of the story, that he lived near the "Christian Brothers' School." Whether these details make...