Burak Sahin Sahin 1
             The readings "Araby" and "The Dead" are two stories from the story collection called The Dubliners written by James Joyce. The first story, "Araby", revolves around a boy's romantic fantasies and love, and ends up with the boy's sudden realization of the futility of his fantasies. Similar to the situation of the boy in "Araby", a young married literature teacher, Gabriel Conroy, suddenly realizes how empty his thoughts had been and in the end of "The Dead". Both of these characters experience a sudden moment of epiphany which in the end might change their points of view of life.
             The first story, "Araby", starts with a brief description of the young boy's neighborhood and surroundings which are expounded as "being blind and quiet except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free" (Joyce 2236). The boy lives in a gloomy house where a priest had died. The drawing room is filled with musty air, the kitchen is littered with useless papers and the books are yellow. There is also a rusty bicycle pump in the wild garden behind the house. Besides these hoarse and shivering elements of the setting of the story, the story takes place in winter where the weather is mostly cold and dark. These depressing surroundings with the aid of the boy's loneliness, his dependence on his relatives, who are his uncle and aunt, and his youngness all shape up and contribute to his situation.
             In this isolated, cold and dark atmosphere, the boy's darkened inside is suddenly illuminated by a girl's appearance in the story. This girl is the sister of one of his friends, Mangan, and the boy crosses from his unexciting, dark inner world to a brighter world
             full of fantasies after he sees her. From there on he always thinks about the girl, and follows her every move. First experience of feeling the excitement of love seems so valuable and different to him; he cannot let it go. Wheneve...