Irving Howe, a literary and social critic, once noted that "the knowledge that makes us love innocence makes innocence unattainable" (Lifehack Quotes). Often depicted in the transition from childhood to adulthood, this loss of innocence is painful yet eminent. A functioning society requires that individuals at some point transition from a world of illusion to a world of reality; a transition that serves as a catalyst is a loss of innocence. James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet, highlights this loss of innocence in his short story “Araby.” In his work, Joyce contrasts his narrator's innocent, childlike nature with the jarring realities of the world, forcing the narrator to reconcile his perception of reality. By questioning and reversing the practicality of romance and faith, Joyce accelerates his narrator's loss of innocence. Furthermore, Joyce suggests that optimistic ideals are limited to the world of illusion, hindered in the real world by the selfish, materialistic, and corrupt nature of society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Through the incorporation of autobiography in “Araby,” Joyce conveys the universal nature of the loss of innocence. For example, both the narrator and Joyce grew up on North Richmond Street and attended the Christian Brother's School. Furthermore, Joyce's critic Harry Stone suggested that historical records verified that Araby Bazaar arrived in Dublin at the same time as Joyce's family lived in North Richmond Street (346). However, Joyce also made strategic and purposeful autobiographical changes. Literary critic JS Atherton has suggested that Joyce's father is actually represented as the uncle in “Araby” to make the narrator appear “reclusive so as to stand out in contrast to his surroundings” (41). Although there is “basis for believing that “Araby” is based on a real event from Joyce's childhood,” the incorporation of autobiographical elements lends merit to Joyce's work (Atherton 40). By weaving autobiographical threads into his literary thread, Joyce ultimately produces a supreme work full of genuine relevance and universal applicability rather than condescension and condescension. Joyce uses personification and connotation-laden diction in the first paragraph to contrast the initially innocent nature of the narrator with the lifeless world around him. In the first line of the text, Joyce describes North Richmond Street as “blind” and having a “dead end” (15). Although the phrase “dead end” denotes a dead-end street, the connotation of the phrase exemplifies the nature of the narrator: blind, unaware, and unaware of the problems that pervade the real world. The boy has an "idyllic ignorance of the rest of the world", as described by journalist Chris Power, which consolidates his initial state of innocence. Furthermore, Joyce notes that at the end of the school day the “school liberates the kids,” implying that children are imprisoned by their education (15). This imprisonment is to some extent responsible for keeping the boys captive in a bubble of innocence; it prohibits them from exploring other, possibly dangerous or enlightening realms of the world. Joyce then contrasts the innocent nature of the narrator with the seemingly lifeless state of the rest of the world which has lost its innocence. The houses, for example, are described as “uninhabited,” “detached,” “brown,” and “imperturbable,” adjectives that evoke a mood of hopelessness and hopelessness (Joyce 15). By contrasting the innocent nature of the narrator with the corrupt nature of his world, Joyce suggests that the innocent narrator is oppressed by the worldexternal. Ultimately, Joyce reveals that the gulf between the narrator and the world is too great to bear; ultimately the gap, Joyce foreshadows, will be bridged through the narrator's conformity, achieved through his loss of innocence. By analyzing the practicality and possibility of romance in the real world, Joyce catalyzes the narrator's loss of innocence. Joyce examines the role of romance through his depiction of the narrator's relationship with Mangan's sister. At first, the narrator seems to have nothing more than an innocent crush on an older girl. Although the narrator finds himself with “her brown figure always in my [his] eyes,” he does not dare to speak to her as he has always “accelerated his pace” to pass her when they meet (Joyce 16). This depiction, of a harmless and childish crush, changes radically when an undercurrent of sexual symbolism inhabits the next part of the text. The first example of this transition occurred on the evening when the narrator was alone in his house and entered the back room. At that moment, the narrator says that all his "senses seemed to want to veil themselves" and he felt as if he was "about to slip away from them", as he "clasped the palms of his hands" and murmured "O love! O Love!”(Joyce 16). As noted by literary critic Edward Brandabur, this scene is clearly a scene of “autoerotic displacement” and satisfaction of the narrator's sexual desire, which is more dominant than ever (53). The shift in the narrator's physical nature from that of childhood to adulthood permeates the rest of the text through “symbolic suggestion” such as the symbolically erotic objects for sale in the final scene at the bazaar (Brandabur 53). As a result of this transition, the reader is no longer able to view the boy's intentions in his romantic pursuit as purely innocent. Instead, his actions must be viewed at least in part as a sexual conquest, thus highlighting his loss of physical innocence. As the narrator loses his physical innocence, he also experiences a loss of spiritual and emotional innocence. Through religious allusions and overtones, Joyce suggests that religion is also corrupt and will fail as a cornerstone of strength for his narrator. Immediately, Joyce made a connection between religion and his narrator by stating that the narrator attended the “Christian Brother's School” and resided in a house once occupied by a priest (15). However, these images are juxtaposed with their description, for example, with the clarification that the priest was “dead in the back parlor” (Joyce 15). By aligning the spiritual with the negative description, Joyce portrays his utter disgust at the “decay of the church,” while also suggesting the eminent loss of the church, faith, and spirituality from within the boy (Atherton 44). This loss of spiritual innocence is foreshadowed from the beginning, with Joyce's inclusion of the narrator's Garden of Eden that resides in his backyard: a “wild garden” containing a “central apple tree” (15). On the day of the bazaar, which fell on “the night of Our Lord,” the narrator ignored his religious duties and instead engaged with the profane world (Joyce 18). This decision is what ultimately led to the “fall of the coins,” the fall of man, and the narrator’s fall from spiritual innocence (Joyce 19). By incorporating the religious construction of the Garden of Eden and original sin, Joyce was able to both symbolically represent his narrator's loss of spiritual innocence and describe his repulsion for the Church. Although the narrator initially appears unaware of his journey of revelation, Joyce uses vivid imagery and purposefully included details to convey the narrator'soriginal awareness of enlightenment. After receiving his duty of service to his lady – to bring back a gift from the Arab bazaar – the narrator returns home “climbing the stairs” to observe his “companions playing in the street below” (Joyce 17). By including this vivid description of the narrator's literal ascendancy and separation from his young friends, the narrator is no longer portrayed as a child, with the same childlike innocence as his playmates in the film.street. Furthermore, Joyce has the narrator rest his "forehead against the cool glass" as he "looked at the dark house where he lived" (18). This is one of the first moments of clear revelation for the narrator who realizes that to complete his quest "he must escape the lively sounds and heat of life" and instead inhabit a state "where passion freezes through the operation of the intellect" (Brandabur 54). In this precisely described moment, the narrator reveals his new understanding: to successfully achieve his romantic conquest he will have to give up his previous innocent and passionate state embodied by his friends below, and instead be present in the real world. The narrator, at this point, is aware that he is neither who he was nor who he will be. Instead he is captivated into a realm of enlightenment where ignorance is dispelled and understanding gained. The narrator's epiphany in Araby finalizes his fall from innocence while also describing the inhibitory characteristics of the real world. The boy enters the bazaar to hear the “falling of coins” in a dark hall and “remember with difficulty” why he had come (Joyce 19). The combination of these sentences highlights the uselessness and senselessness of the boys' fall from innocence; he embarked on a romantic quest only to arrive at a dark, symbolic church to realize that neither romance nor faith gave him true meaning. He looks around the bazaar describing the flirtatious conversation he overheard between a saleswoman and two Englishmen. At that moment the narrator seems to be second class to the English, even though his journey has made him much more enlightened and wise than other men; a disparity that exemplifies the unjust nature of the real world and its new “reality.” However, his final epiphany occurs after the narrator speaks to the contemptuous shop assistant when, “looking up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and mocked by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (Joyce 19). In this moment, the narrator is forced to look into both the literal darkness of the hall and the “grim darkness of self-awareness” (Brandabur 56). The narrator is finally able to “glimpse the unadorned reality” (Stone 362). He comes to understand that his new reality, rooted in the real world, is a place where "everyday religion... is based on an illusory and senseless materialism" and where romance is simply a mode of self-deception (Pietra 356). However, the narrator's state of mind regarding his revelation is twofold. This paradox of emotions is conveyed through Joyce's construction of the concluding sentence which is initially heavy, even burdensome to express with the alliteration of the words “darkness,” “driven,” and “mocked” (Joyce 19). The last part of the concluding sentence includes the alliteration of the words “anguish” and “anger”, which instead roll off the tongue, spreading into a peaceful tone. This precise and distinctive sentence structure reflects the narrator's feeling: sad and depressed because "a part of his lie, his innocent and illusory childhood, is now behind him", but also relieved in the sense that he has discarded his veil of ignorance and is now enlightened to the reality of the world (Stone 366). In the end,.