Araby

Reading Check and Short Answer questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Reading Check

1. What is the name of the narrator’s street?

2. What is the narrator’s aunt’s primary concern about the boy attending the bazaar?

3. How does the narrator describe the changing expression of his teacher’s face?

4. Why does the narrator wait for his uncle on the day of the bazaar?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Who is Mangan’s sister? How does the narrator feel about her presence in his life?

2. Describe the narrator’s emotional experience in the back drawing room. What is the setting of his experience? What words does he say?

3. Summarize the first conversation that the narrator has with Mangan’s sister. What does he promise her?

4. Describe the narrator’s experience at the bazaar. What does he witness? What does he decide to buy?

Paired Resource

“The Arab's Farewell to His Steed”

• This is the full text of Caroline Norton’s poem from the 19th century that the narrator’s uncle recites to him as the narrator is ready to depart for the bazaar.
• This poem foreshadows the narrator’s disillusionment, connecting with the theme Innocence and Shame.
• What is the significance of Joyce referencing this poem? How does the narrator react to his uncle’s recitation?

Recommended Next Reads 

Dubliners by James Joyce

• Joyce’s 1914 collection of short stories includes “Araby,” along with 14 other works.
• Joyce incorporates the same themes of Love and Religion, Innocence and Shame, and Death and Absence throughout this collection of stories regarding middle-class life in turn-of-the-century Ireland.
• Joyce uses the setting of Dublin to unite the trials and tribulations of his characters, many of which are united on the topics of the progression of life and the concept of sudden, life-altering realizations, which Joyce called “epiphanies.”
• Dubliners on SuperSummary

“The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield

• Mansfield’s 1922 short story follows an upper-class girl who has an epiphany regarding life and death during her family’s annual garden party.
• As a fellow Modernist writer, Mansfield explores the themes of Innocence and Shame and Death and Absence in her short story.
• Like the narrator in “Araby,” Mansfield’s protagonist is also an adolescent who has an epiphany regarding the reality of life.
• “The Garden Party” on SuperSummary