"I watched my master’s face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play."


Summary
The narrator, an unnamed boy, describes the North Dublin street on which his house is located. He thinks about the priest who died in the house before his family moved in and the games that he and his friends played in the street. He recalls how they would run through the back lanes of the houses and hide in the shadows when they reached the street again, hoping to avoid people in the neighborhood, particularly the boy’s uncle or the sister of his friend Mangan. The sister often comes to the front of their house to call the brother, a moment that the narrator savors.

Every day begins for this narrator with such glimpses of Mangan’s sister. He places himself in the front room of his house so he can see her leave her house, and then he rushes out to walk behind her quietly until finally passing her. The narrator and Mangan’s sister talk little, but she is always in his thoughts. He thinks about her when he accompanies his aunt to do food shopping on Saturday evening in the busy marketplace and when he sits in the back room of his house alone. The narrator’s infatuation is so intense that he fears he will never gather the courage to speak with the girl and express his feelings.

One morning, Mangan’s sister asks the narrator if he plans to go to Araby, a Dublin bazaar. She notes that she cannot attend, as she has already committed to attend a retreat with her school. Having recovered from the shock of the conversation, the narrator offers to bring her something from the bazaar. This brief meeting launches the narrator into a period of eager, restless waiting and fidgety tension in anticipation of the bazaar. He cannot focus in school. He finds the lessons tedious, and they distract him from thinking about Mangan’s sister.


On the morning of the bazaar the narrator reminds his uncle that he plans to attend the event so that the uncle will return home early and provide train fare. Yet dinner passes and a guest visits, but the uncle does not return. The narrator impatiently endures the time passing, until at 9 p.m. the uncle finally returns, unbothered that he has forgotten about the narrator’s plans. Reciting the epigram “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” the uncle gives the narrator the money and asks him if he knows the poem “The Arab’s Farewell to his Steed.” The narrator leaves just as his uncle begins to recite the lines, and, thanks to eternally slow trains, arrives at the bazaar just before 10 p.m., when it is starting to close down. He approaches one stall that is still open, but buys nothing, feeling unwanted by the woman watching over the goods. With no purchase for Mangan’s sister, the narrator stands angrily in the deserted bazaar as the lights go out.


Analysis
In “Araby,” the allure of new love and distant places mingles with the familiarity of everyday drudgery, with frustrating consequences. Mangan’s sister embodies this mingling, since she is part of the familiar surroundings of the narrator’s street as well as the exotic promise of the bazaar. She is a “brown figure” who both reflects the brown façades of the buildings that line the street and evokes the skin color of romanticized images of Arabia that flood the narrator’s head. Like the bazaar that offers experiences that differ from everyday Dublin, Mangan’s sister intoxicates the narrator with new feelings of joy and elation. His love for her, however, must compete with the dullness of schoolwork, his uncle’s lateness, and the Dublin trains. Though he promises Mangan’s sister that he will go to Araby and purchase a gift for her, these mundane realities undermine his plans and ultimately thwart his desires. The narrator arrives at the bazaar only to encounter flowered teacups and English accents, not the freedom of the enchanting East. As the bazaar closes down, he realizes that Mangan’s sister will fail his expectations as well, and that his desire for her is actually only a vain wish for change.


The narrator’s change of heart concludes the story on a moment of epiphany, but not a positive one. Instead of reaffirming his love or realizing that he does not need gifts to express his feelings for Mangan’s sister, the narrator simply gives up. He seems to interpret his arrival at the bazaar as it fades into darkness as a sign that his relationship with Mangan’s sister will also remain just a wishful idea and that his infatuation was as misguided as his fantasies about the bazaar. What might have been a story of happy, youthful love becomes a tragic story of defeat. Much like the disturbing, unfulfilling adventure in “An Encounter,” the narrator’s failure at the bazaar suggests that fulfillment and contentedness remain foreign to Dubliners, even in the most unusual events of the city like an annual bazaar.


 
The tedious events that delay the narrator’s trip indicate that no room exists for love in the daily lives of Dubliners, and the absence of love renders the characters in the story almost anonymous. Though the narrator might imagine himself to be carrying thoughts of Mangan’s sister through his day as a priest would carry a Eucharistic chalice to an altar, the minutes tick away through school, dinner, and his uncle’s boring poetic recitation. Time does not adhere to the narrator’s visions of his relationship. The story presents this frustration as universal: the narrator is nameless, the girl is always “Mangan’s sister” as though she is any girl next door, and the story closes with the narrator imagining himself as a creature. In “Araby,” Joyce suggests that all people experience frustrated desire for love and new experiences.

 

inflammation (n. 發炎flam, in) a red, painful and often swollen area in or on a part of your body


She was an old flam of mine in high school.


itis→...炎
bronchitis (支氣管炎 n. ) an illness in which the bronchial tubes become infected and swollen, resulting in coughing and difficulty in breathing
gastritis (胃炎 n.) an illness in which the stomach walls become swollen and painful
arthritis (關節炎 n. ) a serious condition in which a person's joints become painful, swollen and stiff
sinusitis (鼻竇炎 n. ) a condition in which your sinuses swell up and become painful


I have to work on your mind.


problem novel
Problem novel is a term used to refer to a sub-genre of young adult literature that deal exclusively with an adolescent's first confrontation with a social or personal ill. The term was first used in the late 1960s to differentiate contemporary works like The Outsiders from earlier fiction for adolescents. The term is rather loosely defined. RoseMary Honnold in The Teen Reader's Advisor defines them as dealing more with characters from lower-class families and their problems; being "grittier"; using more realistic language; and including dialects, profanity, and poor grammar when it fits the character and setting. Sometimes, "problem novel" is used almost interchangeably with "young adult novel"; but many YA novels do not fit these criteria. The term is increasingly used in a negative fashion, and is rarely used by children's literature journals such as The ALAN Review.
Notable problem novels: The Catcher in the Rye, often considered one of the progenitors of modern young adult literature, is sometimes considered a problem novel.
The Outsiders (1967) and The Pigman are problem novels written specifically for teenagers. However, Sheila Egoff notes in Thursday's Child: Trends and Patterns in Contemporary Children's Literature that the Newbery Award winning novel It's Like This, Cat (1964) may have established "the problem novel formula." Go Ask Alice is an early example of the subgenre and is often considered an example of the negative aspects of the form.


ferryman (n. 渡船夫,渡船業者) someone whose job is to operate a ferry


Charon by the river Styx(冥河意象)
Chaton (【希神】在通往冥府的河(Styx)上渡亡靈的神): in Greek mythology, the ferryman who took the souls of dead people in his boat across the river Styx to Hades


bazaar (n. 大市集) an area of small shops and people selling things, especially in the Middle East and India, or any group of small shops or people selling goods of the same type


attend church/school/bazaar


retreat (v. 關閉禁)to go to a quiet safe place in order to avoid a difficult situation:
When he's done something wrong, he retreats to his bedroom.
 
sabbth 安息日
Sabbath or a sabbath is generally a weekly day of rest and/or time of worship observed in Abrahamic religions and other practices. Many viewpoints and definitions have arisen over the millennia(一千年). The term has been used to describe a similar weekly observance in any of several other traditions; the new moon; any of seven annual festivals in Judaism and some Christian traditions; any of eight annual pagan festivals (usually "sabbat"); an annual secular holiday; and a year of rest in religious or secular usage, originally every seventh year.


puppy love (兩小無猜的青澀戀情): romantic love which a young person feels for someone else, and which usually disappears as the young person becomes older
<c.f.> poppy (n. 罌粟花) a plant with large delicate flowers, which are typically red, and small black seeds


現代主義的高峰 modernism: the ideas and methods of modern art, especially in the simple design of buildings in the 1940s, 50s and 60s which were made from modern materials
(1) 李昂  鹿城故事(殺夫)
(2) 白先勇 台本人
(3) Dubliners by James Joyce
城市氛圍、dead end (宗教、社會、人心)的詢問(根)


Dubliners:
Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They were meant to be a naturalistic(博物學的) depiction of the Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.
The stories were written at the time when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character has a special moment of self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses.[1] The initial stories in the collection are narrated by children as protagonists, and as the stories continue, they deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This is in line with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence and maturity.


loss of innocence


blind (n.) a cover for a window made of a single piece or strips of cloth, paper or plastic that is pulled up or down by a string


make/keep/break a promise


quest: seek for the goal
In mythology and literature, a quest, a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and (frequently) as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation[1] and also figure prominently in non-national cultures. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and the overcoming of many obstacles, typically including much travel. The aspect of travel also allows the storyteller to showcase exotic locations and cultures (an objective of the narrator, not of the character).


initiation: sudden realization 
Initiation as an anthropologic term means "the passage from childhood or adolescence to maturity and full membership in adult society" (Marcus, 189), which usually involves some kind of symbolic rite. In American literary theory the term first appears after World War II (Freese 94). As the term `initiation′ is borrowed from anthropology(人類學), many of the definitions of the literary equivalent are oriented on the original concept. As nowadays initiation rites are seldom found (especially in western societies) (Freese 128f), the term had to be adapted, though. The ritual aspects have been replaced by other characteristics to define stories of initiation which will be discussed in the following chapters. There are, however, still some definitions which also find parts of rituality in literary realizations of the initiation-theme (Marcus 190). This hypothesis is controversial in as much as it is difficult to define ritualistic(儀式性的) behavior in everyday (western) life. Furthermore, these ritualistic initiation stories include "adult society deliberately testing and indoctrinating the young" (Marcus 190), which is only found in a "very small proportion of works called initiation stories" (Marcus 190).


figure: the shape of the human body, or a person
build: the size and shape of a person's body


A good article is to use the precise "verbs" in paragraph.


Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
Lawrence rewrote the work four times until he was happy with it. Although before publication the work was usually called Paul Morel, Lawrence finally settled on Sons and Lovers. Just as the new title makes the work less focused on a central character, many of the later additions broadened the scope of the work, thereby making the work less autobiographical(自傳體的). While some of the edits by Garnett were on the grounds of propriety or style, others would once more narrow the emphasis back upon Paul.

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Sons and Lovers ninth on a list of the 100 best novels in English of the 20th century.
It contains a frequently quoted use of the English dialect word "nesh". The speech of several protagonists is represented in Lawrence's written interpretation(解釋;釋義) of the Nottinghamshire(諾丁漢郡--英國英格蘭郡名) dialect, which also features in several of his poems.


chalice  (Holy Grail 聖杯)

A chalice (from Latin calix, cup, borrowed from Greek kalyx, shell, husk) is a
goblet(高腳杯) or footed cup intended to hold a drink. In general religious terms, it is intended for drinking during a ceremony.


epiphany
An epiphany (from the ancient Greek ἐπιφάνεια, epiphaneia, "manifestation, striking appearance") is the sudden realization or comprehension of the (larger) essence or meaning of something. The term is used in either a philosophical or literal sense to signify that the claimant has "found the last piece of the puzzle and now sees the whole picture," or has new information or experience, often insignificant by itself, that illuminates a deeper or numinous foundational frame of reference.
Epiphanies of sudden comprehension have also made possible leaps in technology and the sciences. Famous epiphanies include Archimedes' realization of how to estimate the volume of a given mass, which inspired him to shout "Eureka!" ("I have found it!"). The biographies of many mathematicians and scientists include an epiphanic episode early in the career, the ramifications of which were worked out in detail over the following years. For example, Albert Einstein was struck as a young child by being given a compass, and realizing that some unseen force in space was making it move. An example of a flash of holistic understanding in a prepared mind was Charles Darwin's "hunch" (about natural selection) during The Voyage of the Beagle.


catalyst (n. 催化劑)
1. SPECIALIZED something that makes a chemical reaction happen more quickly without itself being changed
2. an event or person that causes great change:
e. g. The high suicide rate acted as a catalyst for change in the prison system.

 

arrow
arrow
    全站熱搜

    郭肝肝 發表在 痞客邦 留言(0) 人氣()