Comparing and contrasting “Araby” and “A & P” “Araby” by James Joyce and “A & P” by John Updike are short stories that follow the social and romantic differences of middle class boys. Both boys change due to an epiphany along their respective journeys. In “Araby,” the young boy realizes his vainness through his epiphany about love and infatuation while, in “A & P,” Sammy realizes after quitting his job over a girl that he too has been affected by vanity and infatuation. Although they are different stories, there are similarities present. Three elements that can be compared and contrasted in these stories are character development, point-of-view, and the role of language. In “Araby” and “A & P,” character development is evident, as the young boy and …show more content…
The boys have an epiphany about infatuation, and become more experienced and mature as a result. At the start of each story both the young boy and Sammy are shown as immature and that they misunderstand the emotions they feel for women. In “Araby”, the young boy is infatuated with his friend Mangan’s sister. He mistakes his infatuation for love because of ideas he conceived from books he found and uses this language of passion to describe his feelings for her. He murmurs “O love! O love!” as he prays she will talk to him (Cain 167). When she confronts him about the Araby market, the young boy promises to bring her something because she could not go herself. His feelings towards Mangan’s sister are misleading him to think she will reciprocate his feelings if he brings her a gift from the market. The boy realizes after making the journey to Araby that he sees himself as “a creature driven and derided by vanity.” His frustrating infatuation with a beautiful, but uninterested girl excites him into confusing his sexual impulses for those of honor and chivalry (Wells). In “A & P,” Sammy is working at an A & P when three girls wearing beach attire walk in. His attention immediately moves to “Queenie”,
Despite their differences in time period, location, and gender, the narrators of “Araby” and “Wild Berry Blue” are alike in their infatuations and in their journeys. Within each story, the young narrators come to the conclusion their actions reflect their immaturity and folly with regard to their first loves. The appearance of this conclusion in both “Wild Berry Blue” and “Araby” indicates Galchen’s deep understanding of “Araby”. Rivka Galchen must have read James Joyce’s classic short story “Araby” prior to writing her narrative “Wild Berry Blue” with a similar plot but a contemporary
A person’s life is often a journey of study and learning from errors and mistakes made in the past. In both James Joyce’s Araby and John Updike’s A&P, the main characters, subjected to the events of their respective stories, are forced to reflect upon their actions which failed to accomplish their original goal in impressing another character. Evidently, there is a similar thematic element that emerges from incidents in both short stories, which show maturity as an arduous process of learning from failures and a loss of innocence. By analyzing the consequences of the interaction of each main character; the Narrator in Araby and Sammy in A&P; and their persons of infatuation, Mangan’s sister
Stories about youth and the transition from that stage of life into adulthood form a very solidly populated segment of literature. In three such stories, John Updike’s “A & P,” Richard Wright’s “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” and James Joyce’s “Araby”, young men face their transitions into adulthood. Each of these boys faces a different element of youth that requires a fundamental shift in their attitudes. Sammy, in “A&P”, must make a moral decision about his associations with adult institutions that mistreat others. Dave, in “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” struggles with the idea that what defines a man is physical power. The narrator of “Araby,” struggles with the mistaken belief that the world can be easily categorized and kept within only one limited framework of thought. Each of these stories gives us a surprise ending, a view of ourselves as young people, and a confirmation that the fears of youth are but the foundation of our adulthood.
The boy from Araby decides to go to that bazaar for the girl. When he is there he concludes, "gazing up into the darkness I saw just as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger" (Joyce 1206). The boy goes to the bazaar for the girl even though she is a nun. At the end of the night he realizes how crazy his love and actions are. He calls himself a "creature driven and derided by vanity". This statement shows that what he thought was love truly was not but him just getting wrapped up in vanity. The love he thought he had has just caused him "anguish" and "anger". Where the boy from Araby comes to terms with reality Max continues to live in a fantasy. One day as Max helps Ms. Cross in her classroom she brings up the fact that Max is too young for her. Max after a few words between the two says, "and the truth is neither one of us has the slightest idea where this relationships is going. We can 't predict the future" (Rushmore). In Max saying this it shows just how far gone his imagination has gone with delusions of being in a relationship with Ms. Cross. He is aware of their age difference and the rules that prohibit it but continues to hold hope for a "future". Max is not living in reality and is letting his emotions cloud his judgment. Love can lead people to do a number of things it led the boy to the bazaar and Max to live in a
In this essay I will discuss the short stories A&P by John Updike and Araby by James Joyce which share several similarities as well as distinct differences between the themes and the main characters. I will compare or contrast two or more significant literary elements from each of the stories and discuss how those elements contribute to each story’s theme.
Both narrators from story “Araby” and “A&P” came to the realization that their immature imagination were way differed from their harsher realities. Story of “Araby” tell us about a young innocent boy who grew up in a cold, silent street with his aunt’s family. Even the house that he lived, had a dead sense of lost past. Bored of his dull-life and loneliness, one day he discovered his romantic feelings toward Mangan's sister. He found something special about her which changed his dream of life dramatically. He became obsessed with her and slowly began to forget his harsher realities little by little “I ran to the hall. Seized my books, and followed her” (108). Finally to win her heart, one day he promised her to bring a gift from nearby Bazar
A&P and Araby show the growth of their protagonists from boyhood to transitioning into adulthood. In A&P a young cashier, Sammy, catches sight of three girls entering the store after being at the beach. He spots out who he calls the queen of the three, the one that led the others. Sammy goes into detail about the girls’ appearance although he has never met them. He gains affection toward the girls, especially “Queenie”. In Araby, the unnamed young boy often plays with his friends in the streets. He begins to
“Araby” tells the story of a young boy who romanticizes over his friend’s older sister. He spends a lot of time admiring the girl from a distance. When the girl finally talks to him, she reveals she cannot go to the bazaar taking place that weekend, he sees it as a chance to impress her. He tells her that he is going and will buy her something. The boy becomes overwhelmed by the opportunity to perform this chivalrous act for her, surely allowing him to win the affections of the girl. The night of the bazaar, he is forced to wait for his drunken uncle to return home to give him money to go. Unfortunately, this causes the boy to arrive at the bazaar as it is closing. Of the stalls that remained open, he visited one where the owner, and English woman, “seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty” (Joyce 89) and he knows he will not be able to buy anything for her. He decides to just go home, realizing he is “a creature driven and derided with vanity” (Joyce 90). He is angry with himself and embarrassed as he...
John Updike's A & P and James Joyce's Araby share many of the same literary traits. The primary focus of the two stories revolves around a young man who is compelled to decipher the difference between cruel reality and the fantasies of romance that play in his head. That the man does, indeed, discover the difference is what sets him off into emotional collapse. One of the main similarities between the two stories is the fact that the main character, who is also the protagonist, has built up incredible, yet unrealistic, expectations of women, having focused upon one in particular towards which he places all his unrequited affection. The expectation these men hold when finally "face to face with their object of worship" (Wells, 1993, p. 127) is what sends the final and crushing blow of reality: The rejection they suffer is far too great for them to bear.
Wells, Walter. “John Updike’s ‘A & P’: A Return Visit to Araby.” Studies in Short Fiction Spring 1993: 127-33. Rpt. in Short Stories for Students. Ed. Kathleen Wilson. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 1-21. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 Mar. 2010. .
The short story “Araby” by James Joyce is told by what seems to be the first person point of view of a boy who lives just north of Dublin. As events unfold the boy struggles with dreams versus reality. From the descriptions of his street and neighbors who live close by, the reader gets an image of what the boy’s life is like. His love interest also plays an important role in his quest from boyhood to manhood. The final trip to the bazaar is what pushes him over the edge into a foreshadowed realization. The reader gets the impression that the narrator is the boy looking back on his epiphany as a matured man. The narrator of “Araby” looses his innocence because of the place he lives, his love interest, and his trip to the bazaar.
Although “Araby” is a fairly short story, author James Joyce does a remarkable job of discussing some very deep issues within it. On the surface it appears to be a story of a boy's trip to the market to get a gift for the girl he has a crush on. Yet deeper down it is about a lonely boy who makes a pilgrimage to an eastern-styled bazaar in hopes that it will somehow alleviate his miserable life. James Joyce’s uses the boy in “Araby” to expose a story of isolation and lack of control. These themes of alienation and control are ultimately linked because it will be seen that the source of the boy's emotional distance is his lack of control over his life.
The visual and emblematic details established throughout the story are highly concentrated, with Araby culminating, largely, in the epiphany of the young unnamed narrator. To Joyce, an epiphany occurs at the instant when the essence of a character is revealed, when all the forces that endure and influence his life converge, and when we can, in that moment, comprehend and appreciate him. As follows, Araby is a story of an epiphany that is centered on a principal deception or failure, a fundamental imperfection that results in an ultimate realization of life, spirit, and disillusionment. The significance is exposed in the boy’s intellectual and emotional journey from first love to first dejection,
Throughout “Araby”, the main character experiences a dynamic character shift as he recognizes that his idealized vision of his love, as well as the bazaar Araby, is not as grandiose as he once thought. The main character is infatuated with the sister of his friend Mangan; as “every morning [he] lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door…when she came on the doorstep [his] heart leaped” (Joyce 108). Although the main character had never spoken to her before, “her name was like a summons to all [his] foolish blood” (Joyce 108). In a sense, the image of Mangan’s sister was the light to his fantasy. She seemed to serve as a person who would lift him up out of the darkness of the life that he lived. This infatuation knew no bounds as “her image accompanied [him] even in places the most hostile to romance…her name sprang to [his] lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which [he] did not understand” (Joyce 109). The first encounter the narrator ex...
In many cultures, childhood is considered a carefree time, with none of the worries and constraints of the “real world.” In “Araby,” Joyce presents a story in which the central themes are frustration, the longing for adventure and escape, and the awakening and confusing passion experienced by a boy on the brink of adulthood. The author uses a single narrator, a somber setting, and symbolism, in a minimalist style, to remind the reader of the struggles and disappointments we all face, even during a time that is supposed to be carefree.