Vanities of the World - Use of Epiphany

Ignatius in armor as a knight

The narrator's understanding of himself and his place in the world takes a dramatic turn - what is essentially an epiphany - in the last line.  Upon being caught in the darkness of the bazaar, he feels trapped: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” (35)  Most immediately, this reminds me of the first line of the autobiography of St. Ignatius, which was: “Up to his twenty-sixth year the heart of Ignatius was enthralled by the vanities of the world.”  For both, there is a revolution of understanding of relationship to the world, one towards spirituality, and the other towards an uncertain future, both away from past pursuits.  

We have discussed in class how the narrator and situations are loosely continuous throughout the stories.  There is a link between the death of the priest in "Araby" and "The Sisters" in the narrator's indifference towards the death.  The focus of "Araby", however, is not towards this indifference, it is merely taken for granted this time.  After the introduction of sexuality in "An Encounter", that theme develops as something of  a replacement or proxy for spirituality in "Araby".  The other posts have already described the associations made between spirituality and attraction for Mangan's sister.  The attraction takes the place of a guiding value, because although he uses the language and imagery of faith, religion is not first in his mind.  He needs something else.  Schoolwork also fails to motivate him; he says that he "had hardly any patience with the serious work of life, which now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play." (31)  He thinks himself above these past childish things, but he is now "enthralled by the vanities of the world" in his quest for a gift for the girl.  The key use of epiphany comes in when the narrator realizes that his idealized notions of the girl cannot support him or shape what he thinks of as personal fulfillment.  

There is the question of what, if any, value he is to turn to now.  The power of the epiphany seems to come from the suggestion that there is none - his eyes merely "burn with anguish and anger"(35).  I would ask if we may think of Joyce having a similar loss of direction in his early life.

I apologize for the different pagination.