Loss of Innocence

"Ah, young love!"

Isn't that what they all say?  Just the words "young love" create an immediate response of swooning and nostalgia.  Maybe you yourself experienced something categorized under young love, or perhaps you've come to be fond of it as it is frequently romanticized and idolized in the media.  Unfortunately, this blog post won't follow that aura of young love that you're used to. Don't get me wrong, it can be beautiful, but with the story Araby by James Joyce, this is simply not the case.

There's a reason why you can really only experience young love once, and it's because it will ruin you.  That sounds a bit pessimistic of me, but if you think about it, it's quite true.  Falling in love for the first time takes you by surprise.  Like with the young boy in Araby, it will fiercely engulf you while simultaneously fascinating you with its novelty.  This love may or may not work out, but when it ends, the world comes crashing down and is accompanied by your innocence.  Didn't see that one coming did you?  What kind of blog post would this be without my signature take on loss of innocence?  Anyway, the fact that young love happens in your youth makes a loss of innocence that much harder to bear.  

In "Araby", the young boy allows his love for a girl to grow until it begins to control all his desires and actions.  This is evident with his unwavering quest to go to the bazaar to buy the girl a gift, most likely with the hope that it will win her love.  This is all very romantic ( and "awww so cute"), but it is also very shallow.  Think about it.  A boy has dedicated all of his time just to try and win the affection of a girl who doesn't even bat an eye at him.  Young love?  More like young stupidity. (Ouch sorry to those of you hardcore believers in young love.)  The boy comes to realize this with the help of the shopkeeper at the bazaar.  Her cold demeanor towards him combined with her complete uninterest triggers a connection that he makes between her and the girl he has fallen in love with.  His loss of innocence stems from this connection, and he accepts the idea that no matter what he does, the girl he loves may turn out to be like the shopkeeper and never care about him.

"Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."  

At this point, the boy's innocence has disappeared, and the darkness described serves as  a symbol of this loss of innocence.  The once beautiful and light bazaar which he had fantasized about this whole time has now turned dark and all of its light has been extinguished.  The bazaar never lived up to his expectations, forcing him to realize that his love for the girl and what he hopes they will become will never live up to his expectations either.  The boy's once innocent take on the world that was filled with light and only seeing the bright side of things has now turned dark and empty, much like the bazaar.  Even though his short-lived romance provided joy for a time, it still led to pain and the disintegration of his innocence.  Ah, yes, young love!

-Number Six