Fall From Innocence, a Fall Essay

The boy has begun to understand something different about the nature of literature -- goodness is not the only standard by which to judge others, at least the goodness of the Church.

The man, however, only smiled. I saw that he had great gaps in his mouth between his yellow teeth. Then he asked us which of us had the most sweethearts. Mahony mentioned lightly that he had three totties. The man asked me how many I had. I answered that I had none. He did not believe me and said he was sure I must have one. I was silent." (3) the boy feels, however, that he is lacking in front of his friend Mahoney because he lacks for female affection. Desiring to seem different in all ways from Mahoney, he comes up short. Yet the older man, by identifying a different means of measuring the moral nature of life, has changed the protagonist's consciousness. His eyes, essentially, are now different than Mahony. The boy has proceeded from innocence to maturity, ignorance to knowledge -- the faith of the Father is not the only source of moral authority in the world. The boy has entered adolescent, the stage of life portrayed in "Araby."

The adolescent protagonist of "Araby" likewise begins idealizing something in a holy fashion, in this case a woman, the sister of a deceased priest. "While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not go, [to the fair at Araby] she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent." (2) the boy nearly misses the fair, however, because of religious obligations, his first (ignored) indication that faith and desire are not always synonymous, or even goodness because he is torn between his promise to his potential sweetheart and to his faith and family. Finally, however, my aunt said to him energetically: 'can't you give him the money and let him go? You've kept him late enough as it is.' (3)

But after seeing the desired woman with another, the boy gives up something, rather than wins it. What was to be a gift becomes like the apple of knowledge, tossed away. "Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark. (4)

Later, this coin will reappear in a later story in Dubliners, "Two Gallants," to symbolize the virginity won by Corley, of his female conquest. But in the structure of the story, this lost penny, fallen back into the boy's pocket, become bitter apples of the tree of the fruit of knowledge, knowledge of female faithlessness, just as the buried comics become a symbol of the protagonist's lost innocent childhood pleasures, but in a positive light, in "An Encounter."

Works Cited

Joyce, James. "An Encounter." Dubliners. http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/29/63/frameset.html

Joyce, James. "Araby." Dubliners. Bibliomania. http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/29/63/frameset.html.....