Machine summary:
"Unlike more conventional modes of reading, such as New Criticism, a reader- response-driven criticism of "Araby" allows us to see that the ultimate "meaning" of Joyce’s story is not something that can be pinned down conclusively, but is instead a moving, evolving activity of participatory reading (Freimarck, 1970, p.
Although I understand that the narrator’s realization at the end of "Araby" is a deeply personal one, these intertextual influences allowed me to think of his experience in a more generalized light, suggesting that his epiphany is simply a unique manifestation of a larger theme common to many stories about childhood.
On one level, the narrator’s experience in "Araby" resembles the experience contemporary readers undergo when they attempt to make meaning out of a text, trying to fill in the gaps; not a generation gap but a gap in the spirit, in empathy and conscious caring, resulting from uncle’s failure to arrive home in time for the boy to go to the bazaar while it is open, is depicted in this story.
And just as the meaning of the young narrator’s experiences in "Araby" is a combination of the empirical facts of the outside world and the young boy’s personal perceptions of that world, a reader’s discovery of meaning is always a transaction between the reader and the text.
For the general reader, however, the story’s motif of blindness and the way Joyce draws a strong contrast between the magical world of childhood and the mundane world of adult responsibility demonstrate that the text is dealing with themes that are common to almost all stories of childhood."