Soon after her fathers death Emily starts to date a much younger man who is in town to work on the sidewalks. His name is Homer Barron, and he is known to enjoy the company of men, but is not the marrying kind. The town is totally against the affair and tries to bring in Emily’s cousins to put an end to their relationship. Next, the story tells how Emily is finally seen outside her home buying rat poison. The town’s people think she is going to kill herself because Homer had put an end to their relationship.
Life As A Young Boy In James Joyce’s story “Araby”, a young man finds first love and learns disappointment, all in the span of a few short days. How is it that such a story could be told, with such strength and vitality? This is a tale revolving almost solely around gender, specifically the narrator in the story. He’s a young boy, living on North Richmond Street, attending the Christian Brothers’ School, exploring the world around him. His friend Mangan has a sister who occasionally comes out to call her brother in for the night, and it is here that we discover the narrator’s fascination (if not infatuation) with this girl.
In James Joyce's "Araby," the unnamed narrator is a young boy who lives with his aunt and uncle in a dark and untidy home. The boy is obsessed with his friend's sister and often follows her “brown-clad figure”, but he never has the courage to talk to her. He plans to bring her something from “Araby” the bazaar and hopes that by doing so he will impress her, however the unsuccessful way to the bazaar makes him disappointed with reality. Araby employs many themes; the two most apparent themes to the readers is firstly, to escape from darkness and secondly, a boy’s first love. The story both begins and ends with darkness.
The theme of the story is the growth of the boy and the dissatisfaction when he found his belief was so weak in the darkness of the real world. The author uses many negative words to describe the place he lived. In “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except hour when the Christian Brothers School set the boys free, An uninhabited house of two stores stood at the blind end.” (1) The word “blind end” implies there is no way out and there is no place for the boy to escape for his belief. Also, in the third paragraph, the word “somber” (10), “the dark muddy lanes behind the houses” (12-13), and “the dark dripping gardens”(14) show the image of the dirty place to the readers. He also shows his attitude at the beginning of the story, “I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.” (29) He trusts his belief and believes it will keep his soul far away from the dirt.
Narrator reads to him to calm him down and pass the night because they cannot sleep. As he reads he hears noises that correspond to the story he is reading. He ignores them at first but then they become more distinct. Notices Roderick is slumped over in chair and mumbling to himself. Narrator walks over to hear him say he has been hearing these noises for days and thinks that they might have buried Madeline alive and that she is struggling to get out.
The suspended time, or time we observe characters "waiting", within each story provides the reader with a clear indication of the dominant theme of paralysis. In "Two Gallants" we meet two exploitive men, Corley and Lenehan, whom are planning to use a woman to steal for them. In the beginning of the story we see a map of Lenehan's route which is hard to keep up with because he is constantly walking in circles, literally and throughout life. The symbolism of Lenehan traveling around Dublin in loops is towards his life, where he is moving forward but never truly arriving anywhere. Lenehan's personal paralysis is that he lives a pitiful life but doesn't wish to.
King sets these distant parameters to let you know just how alone our protagonist was which actually heightens the intensity of the drama and fear through his words. Gramma is a short fiction story about a boy left alone at home to care for his gramma while is mother is away in town on an emergency with his brother. The protagonist in the story is George an eleven year old boy which we will soon learn has many fears. The antagonist is Gramma, an elderly sick woman who George is fearful of. There is a history of possible witch craft and in the end she is possessed.
The house's state of disrepair is a symbol for the moral, physical, and mental state of Roderick and his sister. Illness is obvious in the two, and the house, which used to be a grand estate, has sunk along with the death of the last two Ushers. So, it is a complete "fall" of the house and the family whose name the house carries. The Narrator arrives at the House of Usher in order to visit a friend. While the relationship between him and Roderick is never fully explained, the reader does learn that they were boyhood friends.
A few routine visits from the townspeople, companionship from Homer Barron, who is found as a skeleton in her house upon her death, and assistance from her house keeper Tobe is the only interaction Miss Emily has with the outside world. In a community infiltrated with evolving social standards brought on by an ever changing political and technological country, Miss Emily is left as “the victim of southern tradition and culture” (Fang, 18). Her victimization, and ultimate ostracism, is a result of the community’s inability to perceive Miss Emily as anything but a “high and mighty” (Faulkner, 392) Grierson who became a “disgrace to the town” (Faulkner, 395) when the working class Northerner, Homer Barron, began courting her. The beginning and end of the story illustrates the townspeople’s almost indifferent opinion of Miss Emily’s death through the narrator’s recollection of events. From the beginning, the community depicts Miss Emily more as an unwanted object they wish to explore than a recently deceased person.
He is now being tentative because he does not know if he should eat the sugar cube, but his loathsome side ended up taking over, and he eats the sugar cube. Now he cannot believe how low in life he has gone, taking away the baby's only thing his mother had left him. Even though the priest lives with guilt, there is an inner force striving for survival, and that is going back to his delightful life but instead becoming a better priest and serving his God well. Detail The author describes the priest as a man running away from his problems. In one situation, he encounters a woman whose baby has just been buried and he knows that "It was necessary to do something," and he prays, "God forgive me" as he begins to walk away from the heartbreaking scene.