James Joyce's "Araby" and Romantic Irony

You'll be reading "Araby" by James Joyce this week. To the right is a picture of Joyce, the famous Irish author, on the cover of the January, 29, 1934 Time magazine. Joyce's fiction made him famous. "Araby" is a short story in a collection Joyce called Dubliners, a book published in 1914 and whose name refers to the city of Dublin in Ireland. Joyce thought of the Dubliners as a kind of a moral history of his country. You can learn more about James Joyce at the website for the James Joyce Centre.

"Araby" is about an Irish boy awakening to the harsh reality of the world. So this is a short fiction version of a bildungsroman, a work in which the main character grows up or matures. The word "araby" was a romantic term for the Middle East, a popular but dreamy notion that Europeans had of that part of the world. However, such a romance is the stuff of dreams, not reality. How does this story represent the ironic portrayal of that romantic view of the Middle East?

Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"

As you read Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," consider Jackson's other work. She was quite popular in the 1950s.

Back to "The Lottery." Why does this particular story stick with people? Is this story that good? And if so why?

Get Your Textbook and Start Reading!

You should have purchased (or borrowed from someone) your primary textbook already. I know that some of you like to go to www.half.com to get a deal. But you'll find there are lots of used copies available at www.amazon.com as well, starting at about $6 if you like hardback. The textbook is called Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing edited by Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Make sure you have the seventh edition.

Reading: You need to have read the first and second chapters by now. And in class we be discussing short fiction, specifically three stories ("The Necklace," "Neighbors," and "A Rose for Emily").

Writing: I'll be asking for your first out-of-class essay this week, an interpretation of either the symbolism in "Neighbors" or in "A Rose for Emily." On Monday, September 18, we'll have an in-class essay discussing the conflict of practicality versus art in the story by Alice Walker, called "Everyday Use."

Inquiry: I think we all try to escape conflict in life, although we find it in the very act of escaping or in some other situation we did not expect. In fiction, as in life, conflict seems impossible to avoid. Why is conflict critical to a story? What does conflict do for the plot of a story? And how are conflicts handled in a story?