Two Pennies

I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

-from the short story Araby by James Joyce

Why I love this passage:

The last sentence is so lucid. It's like the short story writer's version of a home run. It packs no punches. It says everything that has to be said in such a direct and passionate manner. I wish I could write such an honest sentence that I had really earned like Joyce. And you can feel it. You can feel the character's eyes burning with this recognition, this sea change. Its searing nature reminds me a lot of that scene in the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks. Hanks miraculously returns from years stranded alone on a deserted island, desperate to reunite with the love of his life, only to find that she has married someone else and started a family. Even though she still loves him she can't leave her family. And he just says, "I'm so sad that I lost Kelly." There's no "but" or sentence after that. There is no upside, no other way to look at it. It's just heartbreak.

I also love that line "I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity." I think of that line often. What kind of creature am I? What drives me? Or I think of people I know in terms of what drives them. It's such a unsparing and elemental way to think of people. Surprisingly, if you really think about people it's not hard to fill in the blanks.