Through the use of a first person narrative, Joyce communicates the confused thoughts and dreams of his young male protagonist. Joyce uses this familiarity with the narrator’s feelings to evoke in readers a response similar to the boy’s “epiphany”—a sudden moment of insight and understanding—at the turning point of the story. Point of View The…
Category: Literature
Araby by James Joyce: Themes
A sensitive boy confuses a romantic crush and religious enthusiasm. He goes to Araby, a bazaar with an exotic, Oriental theme, in order to buy a souvenir for the object of his crush. The boy arrives late, however, and when he overhears a shallow conversation a female clerk is having with her male friends and…
Araby by James Joyce: Characters
Mangan Mangan is the same age and in the same class at the Christian Brothers school as the narrator, and so he and the narrator often play together after school. His older sister is the object of the narrator’s confused feelings. Mangan’s Sister Mangan is one of the narrator’s chums who lives down the street….
Araby by James Joyce: Summary
“Araby” opens on North Richmond street in Dublin, where “an uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground.” The narrator, who remains unnamed throughout the story, lives with his aunt and uncle. He describes his block, then discusses the former tenant who lived in his…
The Handmaid’s Tale: Analysis
Critics read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as a cautionary story of oppression against women as well as a critique of radical feminism. Some who focus on Offred, the narrator and main character, criticize her passivity in the face of rigid limitations on her individual freedom: Gayle Green in her article, “Choice of Evils,” published…
The Handmaid’s Tale: Setting
International Conservatism In the 1980s, the political climate around the globe turned toward fiscal restraint and social conservatism. In general, this shift was a response to the permissiveness and unchecked social spending that occurred in the 1970s, which were in turn the extended results of the freedoms won by the worldwide social revolutions of the…
The Handmaid’s Tale: Imagery, Point of View & other Literary Devices
Narration The events in this novel take place at different points in the life of the narrator, but the primary setting, the present tense of the novel, is Gilead, where she has been a handmaid in the Commander’s house for five weeks. The reader is introduced to new characters that she meets from this point…
The Handmaid’s Tale – Themes
Sex Roles The roles that are assigned to the two genders in this novel are exaggerations of the roles traditionally played: women here are responsible for domestic duties and men in Gilead run the government functions (since this is a totalitarian state, business and military concerns are part of the government). To most of the…
The Handmaid’s Tale – Characters
The Commander The Commander is a powerful figure in the Gileadean government. He is apparently sterile, although this is not confirmed because, according to law, only women are tested for being fruitful or barren. The first time the Commander is seen breaking the strict social structure is when he sends for the handmaiden to come…
Great Expectations: Analysis
In the Victorian era, reading fiction was an extremely favorite pastime, and new novels were commonly published in serial format in periodicals. Many writers such as Charles Dickens became quite popular and developed huge followings that dutifully bought the periodicals in which they were published month after month, hooked by the entertaining and suspenseful stories….