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Elements of Fiction in the story of “Araby”
The short story “Araby” is written by James Joyce, which is about his adulthood in Dublin.
He wrote the story when he was 23 years old, while living in Trieste. The targeted
audience of this story is Irish people, and Joyce wants them to take a good look at
themselves with his story. There are six elements of fiction and these elements are point of
view, character, plot, setting, symbolism, and motifs. In the story “Araby,” James Joyce
uses all of the elements of fiction to create meaning and its theme.
Point of view is one of the elements of fiction and every story teller has their own point of
view. His point of view in the story is about how an unnamed adolescent boy is in love
with his friend’s sister to the point that he talks to her in his imagination. In literature, a
person who tells a story can be called a narrator and there are four types of narrators. They
are first-person narrator, first-person observer, first-person participant, and the last one is
third-person narrator. The first type of narrator, called first-person narrator, is a person who
tells a story from his or her own perspective and they use first-person pronoun “I” or “we”.
Also a narrator can be reliable or unreliable and they can be omniscient or limited
omniscience. In the story, the narrator uses first-person narrator, who is an unreliable and
limited omniscience narrator, because he tells us the thoughts of only one character.
According to the story, “Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her
door” (Joyce 213). This example shows that the narrator is using “I,” which is first-person
pronoun and he is only talking about one character’s thoughts not her or others.
Another element of fiction is character and the purpose of the stories is reveal the
character. The main character is called the protagonist, and a person who opposes or
impedes the protagonist is called the antagonist. Characters also can be dynamic or static,
and sympathetic or unsympathetic. The character of this story is an unnamed adolescent
boy, who is the protagonist of this story. He falls in love with his friend Mangan’s sister,
but he never finds the courage to talk to her. He will have some hard times when he will
face physical and psychological challenges, which makes him a dynamic character,
