The Dubliners by James Joyce - Arabia as an epiphany for the common man Joseph Campbell was one of the many theorists who they saw fundamental common denominators in the myths of the world's great religions, Christianity among them, and demonstrated how elements of myth found their way into "non-religious" stories. Action heroes, in this respect, are no different from saints. Biblical stories are, quite simply, the myth of the Catholic religion, in which the saints are the heroes. The Star Wars film saga is, according to Campbell, an example of the maturation of the hero through the undertaking of a great quest. While it is a safe assumption that many of today's filmmakers are unaware of the extent to which their narratives approximate biblical parallels, Joyce spent his career turning seemingly simple stories into veiled retractions of biblical and mythical experiences. “Araby” is a case in point. Like Luke Skywalker, the boy from "Araby" definitely reaches some sort of maturation as he embarks on a quest. Joyce takes accurate, mundane details of Dublin life and elevates them into a grand mythic pattern, targeting a moment of departure and awakening for the boy. Joyce's function in equating worldly experience with heroic experience is to propose that the potential for epiphany - the hero's realization of a certain truth - is not exclusive to saints alone, but exists in all people. relationship between the ordinary and the sublime. The ordinariness of the boy's story is evident. On the one hand, it's a simple story about the kind of unrequited "puppy love" that affects most kids his age. The setting details come from real Dublin - North Richmond Street and Westland Row Station - and depict... in the center of the paper... t chooses to go to the temple, Orpheus chooses to go to Tartars. Joyce made his choice: to leave Ireland, and the result is a life's work that demonstrates great insight. It is a good guess that this insight comes from a realization that Joyce himself may have had – his own epiphany, if you will – which illustrates the extent to which the pattern of journey and fulfillment found its way into his life as well as the his work. .Work Cited Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Washington Square Press, 1998. Works consulted Schwarz, David R. Dubliners: Comprehensive, authoritative text with biographical and historical contexts, critical history, and essays from five contemporary critical perspectives. Ed. David R. Schwarz. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1994. Werner, Craig Hansen. Dubliners: a pluralistic world. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988.