James Joyce’s “Araby” houses multiple representations of loss of innocence. The young man who is narrating the story, seems to be going through the stage in life where children start feeling romanticism and forming their own opinions. Joyce writes about the narrator in a way that causes him to become more grown up by the sentence. The gap between his age and his childlike wonder finally rise to meet with each other during this story. Perhaps the loss of innocence is exactly what Joyce wanted the reader to get out of this story. The narrator of “Araby” is dealing with his religious beliefs being replaced by his romantic feelings and the inner childhood wonder escaping him through the representation of the bazar. The narrator’s extreme interest in the back room of his…show more content… He is at the stage in life where children start realizing they like their friend a little more than just as a playmate. The narrator becomes infatuated with this girl as he is described as watching for her out his window, and when she comes out to walk to school he runs “to the hall, seized my books and followed her” (Joyce). He becomes a stalker to this young lady in a way. He follows close behind her on the way to school and begins to think about her all the time, though he only speaks to her once in the story. He says that he “thought little of the future” (Joyce), his innocence slipping away with every thought of her. When he goes in the back room to think about her all his “senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled” (Joyce), that could be him relieving his sexual feelings for the woman. His relief of sexual tension is another example of how he is losing his innocence to adulthood activities. He seems to be blind to this loss of his youth until he gets to the