SOURCE: “Narration of Reading in Joyce,” in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 29, No. 4, Winter, 1987, pp. 387–92.

In the following essay, Robinson considers the imagery in “Araby” and its relationship to the narrator of the story.

… Of the three opening stories in Dubliners, “Araby” presents by far the clearest framing of narrated events within the controlling viewpoint of a definite narrator. Here, finally, is a narrator whose relation to his early self can be confidently gauged and whose interpretation of the past has some claim to authoritativeness—or so it seems. A fairly consistent level of ironic detachment helps us locate the narrator, who then serves as a model for what we might think about the young boy's adolescent passion. Like the other two stories, “Araby” is largely about interpretation—reading—whether of the written word or of signs encountered or acted out in society. As readers we...