Once again, this week’s featured place is a route rather than one fixed location. The video below shows the path the narrator of “Araby” takes all alone one night in hopes of finding something special to buy for Mangan’s sister.
To view the route on the map is to observe the visual cues of the journey. Though the trip is only represented in one paragraph in the text, it becomes quite a trek when seen played out on the screen and when considered as a solo night journey by a young boy. It begins with a walk along the streets before evolving into a more fast-paced train ride. The route as projected in Google Earth offers a modern-day view of the landscape, complete with tunnels and stadiums, but it also raises questions about that landscape as it would have appeared to a young boy in the 1890s. Was there indeed a tunnel on the path of the train? If so, what does the tunnel add symbolically to the narrator’s journey from home to Araby, from childhood to adolescence? What other elements of the landscape help contribute to the story’s themes?