Skip to main content

#6 Araby

    Araby, By James Joyce(1914)

Rating: 7.8/10

Everyone has their own memory of 'firsts' as they're too important to be easily forgotten. First crush, first love, and first commitment will be the proof of emotional maturity as we look back on ourselves. It is natural to be discomforted at how unskilful we were when facing our 'firsts.' Sometimes reciprocation turns out to be our own hallucinations, just like the narrator had. Perhaps the author didn't specify the main characters' names to tell how everyone goes through their firsts full of mistakes. 

I could enjoy the overall theme and concept of the story. Purity and impurity were contrasted, as well as the boy's innocence and his contamination. Mangan's sister was depicted as a goddess/princess who would seldom personally connect with the boy. The theme: A boy having a crush on a religious girl was interesting. However, I couldn't enjoy how there were no noticeable incidents in this story. Therefore, in my opinion, Araby appears to be didactic and conveys priceless concepts, but its potential is limited because readers are left to notice core incidents. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#22 My Wonderful Description of Flowers (Danielle Dutton)

 Rating: 6/10     Danielle Dutton's short story reminded me of " Cat Person" by Kristen Roupenian. In "Cat Person," a male character representing toxic masculinity develops an intimate relationship with an underage college student. When the girl starts rejecting him, he shows signs of obsession and eventually calls the girl a 'whore’. Similarly, in Danielle Dutton's story, a taste of feminism is foreshadowed by introducing a man who visits random houses and attempts to assault women. When the protagonist asserts that she doesn't recognize an unknown man who visited her home, the man gradually becomes impatient and turns out to be hostile. The two stories seemed similar in how women were victimized by male manipulations. (Although the severity of male manipulations differs at each level.)     Apart from Danielle Dutton's method of development   used in the story, this could have been more favorable for me. Although the story had a clear developmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

#14 Caring for Plants (Hey-young Pyun, 2014)

 Rating: 8.5/10     Nowadays,  relationships between people has become so complex that individuals ought to seek for a way of being useful in order to develop stable friendship. Even family members who are not blood related hesitate to fully trust each other when it comes to financial issues. Ohgi, in this short story, is an orphan who loses physical and financial ability due to the car accident. The moment Ohgi opens his eyes after the accident, he was without all the reputation he has established his entire life, but his helpless chunk of body. Everything Oghi had believed was his no longer was, and all he had left was his useless, tattered body and the mattress it lay on. In other words, his life went non-existent after he lost the ‘useful’ abilities.       This way, I felt shivers rushing down my spine, thinking of the potentially superfluous friendships I may have. It was also depressing acknowledging that the majority of my friens will turn ...
Post a Comment
Read more

#18 Snowman (YooMi Seo)

  Rating: 8.8/10     South Korea  is a nation of a miracle that stands as one of the most prominent countries in the world, even after successive wars. The world expected the resurrection of South Korea to be impossible, but South Koreans proved them wrong. However, behind this magical success lay the appalling reality where Koreans are chased by slogans yearning for more efficiency and higher competitiveness. Overheated competition resulting in the isolation of citizens and even death is now rather the cause of stagnation than a stimulus for social development.      In this short story,  the protagonist, who the boss constantly pressures to become better, gradually loses self-respect. He passively allows himself to receive provocative remarks from the boss, not attempting to defend himself, albeit he has admissible reasons for his behaviors. This appalling social structure renders citizens to show frantic commitment to their work, and those who c...
Post a Comment
Read more