Distinction between Light and Darkness

The Darkness Between Two Darkness is a literary device that applies to both the setting’s of The Garden Party and Araby. Both these texts share the same implications of darkness but have two diverse meanings which represent different outcomes. Darkness contributes to the representation of each text and emphasizes how the conception of darkness is seen throughout the stories. By comparing the settings in both the short stories Araby and The Garden Party, the paper will show how the notions of darkness are being used in both the setting of these texts, the different representation of darkness through death and depression, and how Catholic upbringing and class division limits self expression through the representation of darkness. In the two short stories Araby and The Garden Party, the concept of darkness is being used in both these texts. In Araby, the idea of darkness can be illustrated through the physical environment setting of the story. For example, “ An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives with them” (Joyce, 107) This detail exemplifies the solitude of the young boy’s house as well as the detachment from the other houses. With that being said, this point can implicate the darkness that the young boy is living in, which is being represented through the alienation of his home, in contrast to the other houses that are permeated with “ decent lives” and can also connote positivity and light that the young boy’s abode does not have. On the contrary, The Garden Party, the notion of darkness is being used in a more concealed manner. The setting of this story takes place outside in the Sheridan’s backyard where nothing but the sun shined. For instance “And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden party even if they ordered it.”(Mansfield163) That is to say that