题 目 阿拉比的一项主题研究.doc

中文摘要阿拉比是都柏林人的短篇小说集的第三篇作品，是詹姆斯乔伊斯早期现实小说中的一篇，作品中的“我”是一个天真无邪，正在长大的孩子，其实也是乔伊丝童年的经历，他住在“李奇蒙北街”的死巷里。处于青春期的他，对爱情开始有了朦胧的感觉，他喜欢上邻居的姐姐，却不知道如何“向她表白我那神魂颠倒的思慕之情”。通过对作者所处年代的分析和作品所反应出的社会背景及其他方位的描述，来介绍这部作品。通过全方位的介绍，使大家能更好的了解作者著这部作品的深层含义。关键词：斗争 意识 启迪 寂寞 解救A Thematic Study of ArabyAbstract: Arbayisthe Dublin People the short story collections third work, is James in Qiaoyisi early time realistic novel one, in the work “I” is simple-hearted, is growing up the child, is also the Qiaoyisi childhood experience actually, he lives north “Li Qimeng the street” in blind alley. Is in the puberty he, started to love to have the dim feeling, he liked on the neighbor elder sister, actually did not know how “to her to vindicate my that was not oneself admires the sentiment”. Through locates the age analysis to the author and the work responded the social background and other positions description, introduces this work. Through the omni-directional introduction, enables everybody the better understanding author this work in-depth meaning.Key word: struggle; realizes ;enlightens; rescues; lonely1. IntroductionAraby is one of the fifteen short stories that together make up James Joyces collection, Dubliners. In Dubliners, James Joyce primarily seeks to illustrate the paralysis instilled in Dublin. Joyce accuses many institutions of stifling the lifestyles of Dubliners, including the Catholic church and familial confines. The first three stories are told from the point of view of a young boy, Araby is the last story of the first set, and it is told from the perspective of a boy just on the verge of adolescence.It is a short complex story that is a reflection of Joyces own life as a boy growing up in Dublin. Joyce uses the voice of a young boy as a narrator, he communicates the confused thoughts and dreams through the young male protagonist, so the narrator seems much more mature then the boy in the story. The story focuses on the themes of social paralysis, epiphany and longing for escape about darkness, despair, loneliness and enlightenment. And it is the retrospective of Joyces looking back at his life which involves the constant struggle between the bright ideals and the dark reality. And the boys quest ends in failure but results in an inner awareness and his first step into manhood.Key Words: struggle; awareness ;enlightenment; loneliness ;escape2. Context of ArabyJames Joyce, one of the most radical innovators of the twentieth-century writing, dedicated himself to exuberant exploration of mens living situation in Ireland, especially in Dublin. James Joyce grew up as a rebel among rebels. Those movements, whether political or literary, had as their objective the free of Ireland from English dominance.2.1 Social Background of ArabyAs Joyce was born in Dublin which is the capital of Ireland, Ireland permeates all of Joyces writing, especially Ireland during the last part of the nineteenth century and the tumultuously early twentieth century. At that time, Ireland underwent a dramatic cultural revival. Ireland splintered into factions of Protestants and Catholics, Conservatives and Nationalists. Such social forces form a complex context for Joyces writing, which repeatedly taps into political and religious matters.Joyces Dublin was composed mostly of lower-to middle-class residents oppressed by financial hardships, foreign political dominance, fractiousness among rival Irish nationalist groups, and the overwhelming influence of the Irish Catholic Church. Combined, in Joyces eyes, these forces and travails left the ordinary Dubliner with few options for self-expression or freedom of the soul, hence, Joyces themes of paralysis and frustration were established.2.2 The Dublin CityIn the years of Joyces time, the whole Ireland became a bleak country, especially the capital Dublin. The Dublin Joyce knew was a city in decline. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Dublin had been the second city of the British Isles and one of the ten largest cities in Europe. Charming architecture, an elegant layout, and a bustling port made for a dynamic and agreeable urban life. But later in the century, Belfast had outstripped it as the great city of Ireland, and the economy was in shambles. Formerly fashionable Georgian townhouses became horrible slums, with inadequate sewage and cramped living conditions, the ports were in decline, and chances for advancement were slim for the lower and middle classes. Power rested in the hands of a Protestant minority. Not surprisingly, Dubliners dwells heavily on the themes of poverty and stagnation. Joyce sees paralysis in every detail of Dublins environment, from the peoples faces to the dilapidated buildings, and many people assume that the future will be worse than the present. Most of his stories focus on members of the lower or middle classes. This portrait of Dublin and its people is not always a flattering one. Joyce always explores how the social entrapments adversely affect characters. He sees his hometown as a city divided, often against itself, and the aura of defeat and decline pervades every tale. He is often deeply critical of Irish provinciality, the Catholic Church, and the Irish political climate of the time. But the collection is called Dubliners, not Dublin, which aims to express the Dublin peoples stifling life that affected by the dark society seriously. The real power of Dubliners is Joyces depiction of the strong characters whose live and work in this distinctive and bleak city.2.3 Araby in DublinersAraby is a short story collected in Dubliners. Although Joyce wrote the stories between 1904 and 1906, they were not published until 1914 for the political reason. Dubliners paint a portrait of life in Dublin, Ireland, at the turn of the twentieth century. Its stories are arranged in an order reflecting the development of a child into a grown man. The first three stories are told from the point of view of a young boy, the three of them, in fact, conclude with the awareness of the protagonist of being trapped in the visual world of print. Araby is the last story of the first set, and is told from the perspective of a boy just on the verge of adolescence. This story became one of the master works in Dubliners.3. Setting and Atmosphere in ArabyThe boy in the story Araby is intensely subject to the citys dark, hopeless conformity, and his tragic yearning toward the exotic life in the face of drab, ugly reality forms the center of the story. On its simplest level, Araby is a story about a boys first love. however, it is a story about the world in which he lives and also a world inimical to ideals and dreams. This deeper level is introduced and developed in several scenes: the opening description of the boys street, his house, his relationship to his aunt and uncle, the information about the priest and his belongings, the boys two trips-his walks through Dublin shopping and his subsequent ride to Araby. North Richmond Street is described metaphorically and presents the reader with his first view of the boys world. The street is blind, it is a dead end, yet its inhabitants are smugly complacent. The houses are “imperturbable” in the “quiet”, the “cold”, the “dark muddy lanes” and “dark dripping gardens” (吴伟仁 2005: 457), here the first use of situational irony is introduced, because anyone who is aware, who is not spiritually blinded or asleep, would feel oppressed and endangered by North Richmond Street. The description of the houses reflects the negative attitudes of their inhabitants, the people who live there (represented by the boys aunt and uncle) are not threatened, however, they are falsely pious and deeply self-satisfied.The background or world of blindness extends from a general view of the street and its inhabitants to the boys personal relationships. It is not a generation gap but a gap in the spirit, in empathy and conscious caring, that results in the uncles failure to arrive home in time for the boy to go to the bazaar while it is still open. The uncle has no doubt been to the local pub, negligent and indifferent to the boys anguish and impatience, the boy waits well into the evening in the “imperturbable” house with its musty smell and old, useless objects that fill the rooms. The house, like the aunt and uncle, and like the entire neighborhood, reflects people who are well intentioned but narrow in their views and blind to higher values. The total effect of such setting is an atmosphere permeated with stagnation and isolation. The use of symbolic description of the dead priest and his belongings suggest On a deeper level, remnants of a more vital past. The bicycle pump rusting in the rain in the back yard and the old yellowed books in the back room indicate that the priest once actively engaged in real service to God and man, and further, from the titles of the books, that he was a person given to both piety and flights of imagination. But the priest is dead, his pump rusts, his books yellow. The effect is to deepen, through a sense of a dead past and the spiritual and intellectual stagnation of the present. Into this atmosphere of spiritual paralysis the boy bears, with blind hopes and romantic dreams, he encounters with the first love, in a blending of romantic and Christian symbols he transforms in his mind a perfectly ordinary girl into an enchanted princess: untouchable, promising, saintly. Setting in this scene depicts the harsh, dirty reality of life which the boy blindly ignores. The contrast between the reality and the boys dreams is ironically drawn and clearly foreshadows the boys inability to keep the dream, and only to remain blind. The boys final disappointment occurs as a result of his awakening to the world around him. The tawdry superficiality of the bazaar, which in his mind had been an “Oriental enchantment”, strips away his blindness and leaves him alone with the realization that life and love differ from the dream. Araby, the symbolic temple of love, is profane. The bazaar is dark and empty, it thrives on the same profit motive as the market place “two men were counting money on a salver” (ibid. : 462), and the love here is only represented as an empty, passing flirtation.Araby is a story of first love, even more, it is a portrait of a world that defies the ideal and the dream. Thus setting in this story becomes the true subject, embodying an atmosphere of spiritual paralysis against which a young boys idealistic dreams are no match. Realizing this, the boy takes his first step into adulthood. 4. Major Themes in ArabyBased on the further study of the boys inner experience, the themes of the story can be analyzed from the following perspectives. 4.1 Social ParalysisThe story opens with the themes of darkness and blindness. The description of North Richmond Street, a “blind”, “cold”, “silent” street where the houses “gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces” overwhelms readers with feelings of oppression and endangerment. Everything here seems to be dead or decaying in the “quiet and cold street,” “dark muddy lanes” and “dark dripping gardens” (ibid. : 457). The boys house has the same dead presence and lost past, this is a darkness that extends throughout the story, when he finally reaches the bazaar, it is still full of darkness, the boy said in the novel “nearly all stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness” (ibid. : 462), which partly reflects the environment of Dubliners life. Joyce uses images of darkness in Araby to reveal the setting, internal mood of the characters and theme, the setting is full of dark images to inform readers of the story, the settings where the story takes place are gloomy and cold, moreover, darkness reveals condition and surrounding area around characters, this is illustrated by the use of dark images such as “Dark dripping garden”, and “dark muddy lanes” (ibid. : 457). Darkness also reflects melancholy and obstacles in the society where the boy lives, for example, the boy states “I looked over at the dark house where she lived” (ibid. : 460), which shows he has no ability to break through the darkness to confess his internal feeling to the girl but lingered before her house, actually, this also describes the condition of the boys relation to reality, and the story ends with an image of eyes seeing, this also represented most Dubliners internal mood and thinking, the imperturbable society burned with darkness and blindness but nothing.4.2 Spiritual paralysisJoyces tales, faithful to his intentions, portray impotence, frustration and death, his city is the heart of moral, intellectual and spiritual paralysis and all the citizens are victims. Joyce had said of Dubliners, that he intended to “write a chapter in the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis” (Joyce 1966: 36). Paralysis, a living death or total anesthesia of the senses, seems to be the existential condition of Dubliners and its crux. Joyce himself confirmed this in a letter of July 1904, where he said that he intended Dubliners “to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city” (ibid. : 55). In the novel of Araby Joyce continued this theme. The images of this story show that the spiritual environment of the boy is paralyzed through the blind street and the dark and musty lanes. In the story, the young boy has a desire, faces obstacles to it, then ultimately relents and suddenly stops all action, these moments of paralysis show his inability to change his life and reverse the routines that hamper his wish. In the novel, the author writes “I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the moral real.” (吴伟仁 2005: 463) The boy states his thoughts through this monologue, he halts in the middle of the dark bazaar, knowing that he will never escape the tedious delays of Dublin and attain love, throughout the description, this stifling state appears as part of daily life in Dublin, which all Dubliners ultimately acknowledge and accept. It is also stressed by aimless wandering in the evening or at night through the Dublin streets which lead nowhere or come to a blind end, charges the whole story with a feeling of loss and hopelessness and reveals a blind, labyrinthine fallen world where all human values have degenerated and human will has broken down, where people, to use an metaphor, have turned to stone and therefore are completely paralyzed. 4.3 Religion and EpiphanyReligion is a daily ritual of repetition that advances no one. In Araby, religion acts as a metaphor for dedication that dwindles. The presence of so many religious references also suggests that religion traps Dubliners into thinking about their lives after death. However, the Epiphany also starts from the religion.4.3.1The Church in ArabyThis short story is filled with symbolic images of a church, and the boy once placed his hope and dreams on the church, he is fiercely determined to invest in someone within the church the holiness he feels should be the natural state of all within it, but a succession of experiences forces him to see that his determination is in vain. When he realizes that his dreams of holiness and love are inconsistent with the actual world, his anger and anguish are directed, not toward the Church, but toward himself as “a creature driven and derided by vanity” (ibid. : 463).Joyce targets Catholicism as the primary source of paralysis, and he describes the books left behind by the priest who formerly occupied the narrators house: “I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled damp The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant and The Memoirs of Vidocq. I like the last best because its leaves were yellow.” (ibid. : 456) The yellow color of the pages suggests that the priest read this book more often than the others. Ironically, a priest, whose duty is to promote sanctity, read The Memoirs of Vidocq, a book detailing the exploits of a criminal, more often than he read the other two books based on religion. Joyce suggests that illusions in Catholicism such as this have a strong influence on the paralysis of Dublin. The story ends Joyces apparent condemnation of Catholicism, as he brings down the Virgin Mary figure to a mere human, to go along with his commentary on the priest early on. Basically, he seemed to point to the corruption of the church in that the priests belongings included a Protestant tract, and his fairly significant possessions, when priests are supposed to live lives of poverty. The famed final line of the story expresses Joyces own disillusionment with the church in his lifetime“I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (ibid. : 463). Thus does Joyce express his personal pain through the boy, and it is made even more poignant by the first person point of view in which the story is written.4.3.2 EpiphanyThe epiphany in this novel of childhood, told in the first person, is felt as a moment of growth and of realization of the boynarrator. This novel, in fact, concluded with the awareness of the protagonist of being trapped in the visual world of print. Characters experience both great and small revelations in their everyday lives, moments that Joyce himself referred to as “epiphanies”, a word with connotations of religious revelation. These epiphanies do not bring new experiences and the possibility of reform, but let characters to better understand their particular circumstances, usually rife with sadness and routine, which they then return to with resignation and frustration. The boynarrator behaves like the hero of a romanti