Araby and Yeats' Irish Airman Foresees His Death

Joyce calls attention to the nation's identity in Araby, especially at the end of the story. His first paragraph uses words that associate with sight or vision when talking about the Christian Brothers' School letting out. Words like "conscious" and "blind" are paradoxically used when the man recounts the neighborhood at night. He also spies on the young woman through the blinds. When he does this he says, "I kept her brown figure always in my eye..." He references "her image" on a couple occasions and there is always a mysterious quality to her. And finally after the man visits the bazaar, we get another "sight" reference: "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." As he noted, his eyes were always full of tears. His eyes are burning again by the end of the story, symbolizing his emotional response to venturing out on his own, just as Ireland tried to do away from England.

Yeats' poem is about a pilot that suddenly questions why he is flying thousands of feet in the air, risking his life to guard people he does not love. This is another example of sight and vision being brought up in the years surrounding the Easter Uprising.  His eyes are metaphorically opened to the reality of his cause. He realizes, "No likely end could bring them loss/ Or leave them happier than before." There is no point to his actions. He has officially lost hope in his cause, now believing that he will never be able to enact change; his death will be meaningless. "A waste of breath" is all that he sees his efforts as now. In both cases, the vision that both men recieve ultimately leads to their depression and lost hope; hte cause they were fighting for may not have been what they thought it was.