Throughout James Joyce's short story, "Araby", there are countless references to religious themes. The story illustrates a boy's feelings of love and disillusionment about a girl, Mangan's sister, which can be paralleled to his beliefs and feelings about his religious life. Joyce also shows how religion entraps people throughout the story. He creates this theme of religious entrapment to further describe the disillusionment towards Roman Catholicism. Joyce also portrays many religious symbols and often refers to common church symbols to keep the religious theme of the story alive.

Early in the story, Joyce begins his theme of restrictiveness of Roman Catholicism. He uses the words, "set us free," do describe the way in which the boys were let out of their Catholic school. This shows the entrapment which religion places upon the children in the story. Religion is paralleled to a jail in this scene of events, which...