The Loon

Study Questions 1. What is the relationship between Vanessa and Piquette, and how does this relationship change?

Vanessa's feelings towards Piquette change from discomfort to curiosity to embarrassment.

2. How are the Metis represented in the story?

“if that half-breed youngster comes along to Diamond Lake, I'm not going” (188)

Vanessa's images of Natives are drawn solely from literature, and these representations are only superficially positive. When Piquette doesn't reveal nature's secrets, Vanessa concludes “as an Indian, Piquette was a dead loss” (191)

3. What do the loons symbolize?

“My dad says we should listen and try to remember how they sound, because in a few more years when more cottages
It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat. . .” (130). When she finally speaks to the narrator, he is overwhelmed by her attention, and barely able to speak.

4. Why does the narrator go to the bazaar?

The magical name of the bazaar—Araby—awakens fantastic images in the boy's mind, casts “an Eastern enchantment” (130), and provides an escape from the harsh realities of his life.

5. Why is Mangan's sister not named?

his relationship with Mangan's sister holds no love. The narrator's understanding that his love for Mangan's sister has been in vain is further underscored by the fact that Mangan's sister is not named.

6. What does the narrator realize at the bazaar?

The story ends with the boy's epiphany. Ironically, it is in the darkness of the closing bazaar that reality pervades and insight comes to the narrator: the bazaar holds no enchantment; his relationship with Mangan's sister holds no love. 7. What is the significance of the religious imagery in the story?
The boy relays the story of his love for Mangan's sister in religious language and imagery. She appears to him in a halo of light; “her name sprang to [his] lips at moments in strange prayers” (129); it is a convent retreat that prohibits her attending Araby; the closing bazaar is like a “church after a service” (131). For the boy, sensual desire and religious adoration are conflated in his idealization of Mangan's sister, in whom he