Wanderlust World Wanderlust World Young woman in Dublin, lives with abusive father, works as a shop clerk, burdened by domestic duties and a promise to her dead mother.
Family expects conformity to traditional female role; she feels trapped, not truly seen.
Lack of freedom, fear of the unknown, paralysis of will. She longs to escape with Frank to Buenos Aires but cannot break free.
Imagines a life of love, respect, and autonomy abroad—a sharp contrast to her stifling reality.
Sensitive, imaginative boy in a drab Dublin neighborhood; infatuated with his friend's sister.
Treated kindly but overlooked; feels alienated from peers and the mundane adult world.
Inability to act on his romantic idealism; the bazaar (Araby) disappoints, revealing the gap between fantasy and reality.
Yearns for exotic escape, spiritual fulfillment, and a place where he belongs.
Both characters experience paralysis—a central theme in Joyce's *Dubliners*. They are confined by social, familial, and psychological forces, dreaming of liberation but unable to achieve it. Their epiphanies reveal the emptiness of their aspirations within a colonized, spiritually stagnant Dublin.