James Joyce's story of a Dublin boy, a promised gift, and a bazaar closing its lights.
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Ten words unlock the story. Work through the four short activities — say your answer out loud before you reveal it.
Three words from the story: bazaar · errand · vanity. Match each definition to the right word — out loud, then reveal.
Read each part. After it, there's a quick comprehension check (try the questions from memory first), then one thing to discuss.
North Richmond Street was a quiet, blind street — a dead end — where the houses gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces. The boy lived there with his aunt and uncle in a house whose former tenant, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room, leaving behind old yellowed books and a rusty bicycle-pump under a bush in the wild garden. In winter the boys played in the dark lanes until their bodies glowed, and their shouts echoed in the silent street.
And every evening, from the shadows, he watched for Mangan's sister. She lived across the way; she would come out on the doorstep to call her brother in to tea, and the light from the half-opened door caught the white curve of her neck and the soft rope of her hair. Her name sprang to his lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which he himself did not understand. His eyes were often full of tears, and he could not say why. He had never spoken to her, beyond a few casual words — and yet her name was like a summons to all his foolish blood.
Her image accompanied him even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings, carrying parcels through the flaring streets for his aunt — among the drunken men and bargaining women, the shrill litanies of shop-boys, the nasal chanting of street-singers — he imagined that he bore his chalice safely through a throng of foes. He did not know whether he would ever speak to her at all, or, if he spoke, how he could tell her of his confused adoration. But his body was like a harp, and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
1. What kind of street does the boy live on, and with whom?
2. How well does the boy actually know Mangan's sister — and how does he feel about her?
1. A quiet dead-end street in Dublin ("blind" street), in a house where a priest once lived and died. He lives with his aunt and uncle.
2. Hardly at all — they have exchanged only a few casual words. Yet he is completely infatuated: he watches her door every morning, her name comes to him like a prayer, and his eyes fill with tears he cannot explain.
At last she spoke to him. She asked him was he going to Araby. He forgot whether he answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar, she said; she would love to go. But she could not go, she told him, turning a silver bracelet round and round her wrist — there was a retreat that week in her convent school. The light caught her as she stood at the railing, and he stood alone at the bars, seeing only the white curve of her neck and the border of her petticoat. "If I go," he said, "I will bring you something."
What innumerable follies laid waste his waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! He wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. He chafed against the work of school; the word Araby was called to him through the silence in which his soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over him. His schoolmaster, noticing his idleness, hoped he was not beginning to idle; but he could not call his wandering thoughts together. He had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between him and his desire, seemed to him child's play — ugly, monotonous child's play.
On Saturday morning he reminded his uncle that he wished to go to the bazaar in the evening. The uncle, fussing at the hallstand with his hat-brush, answered curtly: "Yes, boy, I know." All day the boy waited. At dinner-time the uncle had not yet come home. The boy sat staring at the clock, then marched upstairs through the high, cold, empty rooms of the house, and looked down at the street, and over at the dark house where she lived. An hour passed. At nine o'clock — at last — he heard his uncle's latchkey in the door, heard him talking to himself, heard the hallstand rocking under the weight of his overcoat. His uncle had forgotten. "The people are in bed and after their first sleep now," the uncle said. Then, when the boy asked again for the money: "Do you know The Arab's Farewell to his Steed?" — and the boy left the kitchen while his uncle was still reciting the opening lines to his aunt.
1. Why can't Mangan's sister go to the bazaar, and what does the boy promise?
2. What goes wrong on Saturday, and how late is the boy delayed?
1. There is a retreat at her convent school that week. The boy promises: "If I go, I will bring you something."
2. His uncle — who holds the money — forgets all about the bazaar and comes home at nine o'clock. Instead of hurrying, he jokes and begins reciting a poem, while the boy finally escapes with the coin, hours too late.
He held a florin tightly in his hand as he strode down Buckingham Street towards the station. The sight of streets thronged with buyers and glaring with gas recalled to him the purpose of his journey. He took his seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train. After an intolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly, crept onward among ruinous houses and over the twinkling river. In a few minutes, the train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. It was ten minutes to ten.
He could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing the bazaar would be closed, passed in quickly through a turnstile, handing a shilling — a whole shilling — to a weary-looking man. He found himself in a big hall girdled at half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness. He recognised a silence like that which pervades a church after a service. He walked into the centre of the bazaar timidly. A few people were gathered about the stalls which were still open. Before a curtain, over which the words Café Chantant were written in coloured lamps, two men were counting money on a tray. He listened to the fall of the coins.
Remembering with difficulty why he had come, he went over to one of the stalls and examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door of the stall a young lady was talking and laughing with two young gentlemen — about nothing at all. Observing him, the young lady came over and asked him did he wish to buy anything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to him out of a sense of duty. He looked humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to the stall and murmured: "No, thank you." He lingered a moment, then turned slowly away. He allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in his pocket. A voice called from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark. Gazing up into the darkness, he saw himself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and his eyes burned with anguish and anger.
1. What does the boy find when he finally reaches Araby?
2. What happens at the stall — and what does he understand in the final moment?
1. A bazaar that is closing: most stalls shut, half the hall dark, a church-like silence, and two men counting the evening's money. The magic name turns out to be an ordinary charity sale at closing time.
2. A saleswoman, chatting idly with two men, asks him out of pure duty if he wants anything; he says "No, thank you" and buys nothing. As the lights go out, he sees himself clearly for the first time — "a creature driven and derided by vanity" — and burns with anguish and anger.
This is a story made of feelings: the boy is infatuated with a girl, obsessed with a word, ashamed of himself by the end. In English, many feeling-adjectives take a fixed preposition — and choosing the right one is what makes you sound natural.
Complete each story sentence with the missing preposition only.
1. The boy was completely infatuated Mangan's sister, though they had barely spoken.
2. He grew tired schoolwork — everything ordinary bored him now.
3. He was nervous speaking to her at all.
1. with (infatuated with someone)
2. of (tired of something)
3. about (nervous about + -ing)
Complete each sentence with the right adjective from the box + its preposition: keen · ashamed · disappointed · obsessed.
1. After the promise, he became the word "Araby" — it followed him everywhere.
2. Mangan's sister was clearly going to the bazaar herself, but she couldn't.
3. At the closing bazaar, the boy felt bitterly the whole magical adventure — and, at the last, himself.
1. obsessed with
2. keen on
3. disappointed with (or by) · ashamed of
Fill each gap with the correct preposition. Read the whole paragraph aloud when you finish.
I used to be good my schoolwork, and quite proud it. Now I am interested nothing but one name. I was so excited the bazaar — and now, standing in the dark hall, I am simply ashamed myself.
at · of · in · about · of
Five different prepositions in five lines — that's why these pairs must be learned as single units.
Hold on to these pairs — in the Speak tab you'll describe feelings throughout, and every adjective will want its preposition.
"Araby" appears in Dubliners (1914), Joyce's book of stories about his home city — each one ending in what he called an epiphany: a sudden moment when a character sees their life as it really is. It draws on Joyce's own boyhood; there really was an "Araby" bazaar in Dublin in 1894.
This is the heart of the lesson — do all of it out loud. The timer is there to keep you going: fill the time with detail rather than racing through it.
Tell the story of Araby in your own words, as if to someone who has never heard it. Move through the arc: the quiet street and the girl at the door → the promise at the railing → the restless week and the forgetful uncle → the late train → the closing bazaar → the lights going out.
Use at least three adjective + preposition pairs (infatuated with, keen on, disappointed with, ashamed of) and at least five key words (infatuated, enchantment, distracted, bazaar, errand, vanity, promise, admirer, in vain).
The boy learns more in one dark minute at the bazaar than in weeks of dreaming. Build an argument: do we learn more from disappointments than from successes? Use the story as your first example, then one from life, history or film. Consider the other side too — can a disappointment teach the wrong lesson?
"Araby" is about the distance between how we imagine things and how they turn out. Tell a story — true or invented — about anticipation and arrival.
Stuck for an idea? Pick one of these and run with it: