EPIPHANIES

The story Araby by James Joyce opens with a description of North Richmond Street as a "blind...quiet street" with a sense of everything being the same and lifeless, sort of decaying in a way, because a priest had died and he took a sense of hope with him. "The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room..." There were a few paper-covered books, legacies that the priest had left behind. The narrator of this story is the young boy, who spends every morning laying on the floor in the front parlour watching Mangan's sister, not once speaking to her except for some casual exchange of words. At the slightest mentions of her name, Joyce uses descriptive words to allow the readers to get a feel of the impact the girl had on the boy. She had become a goddess like figure to him that he desired. When he went with his aunt marketing, he had imagined walking with Mangan's sister and protecting her. "These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined ... My eyes were often full of tears and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom." Joyce hints the epiphany in the story, that is, the boy is unable to talk to her dealing with the pain of love, but when he is alone, he has fantasies of what it would be like to be with her and he murmurs to himself: "O love! O love!"

When the girl finally spoke to him, she asks him if he was going to Araby. She sort of hints to him that from this conversation, she's trying to get something out of it, but he is caught up in his "love" for her that he does not realize it. She says she would love to go but can't, and he wanted to buy her something from there if he went. The boy thought that if he buys her a gift from the bazaar, she would see how much he cares for her and it will prove his love for her. When the boy gets to the bazaar, he arrives late and notices that nearly all the stalls were closed and the hall was in darkness. This image of a place that was suppose to be spectacular, possibly a place that could help express love for some people, turned into a place that was half closed, disappointing, and dirty. The place foreshadowed a sense of death, with the darkness taking over.

The epiphany is now further supported when the boy says "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." His dream, his quest, his hope to capture this girl's heart and crushes and comes to an end when he realized that doing all of this for the girl won't make her love him. He is faced with reality and realizes that the whole time, he just created false hope in a world he wished came true. The boy's spiritual paralysis made him become blinded by what he perceived as a romantic first love and filled himself with false hope.

In Eveline by James Joyce, he introduces a female character named Eveline who is faced with the decision of living at home with her father, or leaving to start a new life. Eveline's mother had passed away and her father does not trust her with anything and will not allow her to live on her own. Eveline's paralysis is the fact that she cannot let go of the past, of her connection with her home and her father, and she can't stand up for herself. She proves her father's point of her inability to live on her own. Eveline resulted in leaving her lover and staying in her hometown continuing to live with her father. When Eveline's mother had passed away, the words "Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!" constantly replayed in her head causing her to stand up in a sudden impulse of terror and wanting to escape. The use of such terms like "save her" and "happiness" crates a sense religious moments which can lead to spiritual/religious epiphanies. Eveline's inability to escape caused her to realize that she does not truly want to escape her hometown either because it was where all the good and bad moments in her life happened and where her family and life truly was.