A&P a story by John Updike, and Araby by James Joyce both share obvious similarities and differences. These two stories main theme is focused on teenage boys who are discovering the differences between actual reality of woman, and images of fantasy woman that are constantly floating around in their minds. A&P and Araby may have been written at different time periods, but they still share similarities and comparisons of both the protagonist’s in each short story. Some of the similarities and differences are found in the conflicts each character faces, use of dramatic irony, and the setting in which each story takes place.
Both of these stories share some type of conflict whether it’s real or perceived by them. Sammy in A&P experiences conflicts
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in the story all the time. The conflict that Sammy faces is very similar to the one Jimmy faces in Araby. The reason they are similar is because both boys experience lustful feelings and exaggerated thoughts for the woman of their ongoing dreams. Sammy, as a protagonist in the story has these feelings for a girl named queenie whom he first meets when she walks into the A&P store with two other girls. He noticed them right away because they were wearing bathing suits, which was very unusual to the people in the store. The reason this is conflicting with his normal life is because he cannot get her out of his head or take his eyes off of her. It is evident when he states in the story “The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece” (Updike 591). Jimmy has these very much identical lusting feelings for Mangan’s sister whom he barely knows. We see just how he feels when he states “When she came out the doorstep my heart leaped” (Joyce 328). On the other hand, Jimmy faced a different conflict. The conflict he faced was with his uncle because he got in Jimmy’s way of going to see his dream girl at Araby, the bazaar and he could do nothing about it. “My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten” (Joyce 330). The reader is drawn to the stories, first and foremost by the setting of the two stories.
The settings for A&P and Araby are similar in some ways. For example, one way the settings are similar is because in A&P it said “three-real estate offices and about twenty-seven old freeloaders tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again” (Updike 594). In Araby it said “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brother’s school set the bus free” (Joyce 327). These are similar because the setting takes place in lower income neighborhood for both stories. The difference between the settings in both stories is that in A&P it takes place in the year 1961, while Araby takes places in 1914. This could be a contributing factor to the way people dressed in A&P and the way they dressed in Araby as well. Also, the settings could have triggered Sammy being in a fantasy world of woman, and even Jimmy doing the same, but having it under control with his religious …show more content…
beliefs. The way irony is used in A&P and Araby makes it apparent to the reader.
An example in which irony is apparent was when Sammy said “I quit” to Lengel, because he wanted to be a hero to queenie and the two other girls who were walking out of A&P. The irony here is that they didn’t even care and when he came out of the A&P they were gone. “I look around for my girls, but they’re gone, of course” (Updike 596). Sammy even stated at the end “I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” (Updike 596). An example in Araby of irony was when Jimmy wanted to buy a gift for Mangan’s sister to give to her at the bazaar she still wouldn’t care for him because all she did was ask him if he was going to it. Jimmy said yes and asked her she should go to, but she had to go to church so she couldn’t make it. That’s when Jimmy told her he would buy her something if she went, which to him made it seem like he was being a hero. In other words, Sammy experienced a different type of irony when he realized he was immature and hadn’t fully grown into a man. “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your Mom and Dad” (Updike 596). The irony that Jimmy faced was at the end of Araby when he wanted to buy that gift so bad for Mangan’s sister, but only had a few pennies. “I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket” (Joyce 331). This is ironic because he wasted all his money buying tickets to go to the bazaar just to see
her. At the end of this comparison between two very similar but different stories, we can conclude that A&P and Araby had two protagonists with very similar views of woman and how they lived or wanted to live in a world where are their dreams, which were the girls would come true and they’d be together forever like a love story. The only difference was the settings for each person and the circumstances they faced to try and impress their girls. In conclusion, these two stories sent an important message to its audience. That message was that sometimes dreams don’t always come true and we are supposed to face the harsh real world in which we live and not go off into ideas that can and probably never will happen. This close up reading really helped me focus on themes in the story because it made me realize that sometimes we are faced with overpowering circumstances that we may not be able to overcome, but we try to do so anyways like Sammy and Jimmy did in A&P and Araby.
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
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.
Sammy was indeed caught between the two worlds that collided one day in the A&P, and he chose to pursue the one that was not his own. He was able to do this when others were not because he understood both worlds, his attitude toward each were completely different, and his actions were drastic enough to cut him free from the bonds that his world had on him. With two paths to choose from and only one to follow, Sammy took the path less traveled in that small town by the sea. He was, to use his own analogy, a wolf in sheep's clothing.
The narrator of both stories did an outstanding job in setting the scene for the readers. The theme of both stories to me is about lessons learned. In Araby the young unnamed protagonist makes a promise to bring back a gift from a bazaar and was unable to purchase the gift leaving him disappointed and angry. “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (Joyce, 1914). To me the young man is angry because of all the trials and tribulations he put himself through to get a gift to impress a young lady who really was not interested in him anyway. And Sammy from A&P although a little older than the unnamed boy from Araby also shared a fixation with a female character. Sammy thought because he quit his job to make a statement to his boss Mr. Lengel that she (Queenie) would be outside waiting for him. “I look around for my girls, but they're gone, of course. There wasn't anybody but some young married screaming with her children about some candy they didn't get by the door of a powder-blue Falcon station wagon” (Updike, 1961). Sammie assumed that this act of solidarity would place him in an advantageous position with the young lady. Sammy who was surely disappointed when his expectations were not met did learn a valuable lesson. According to Sammy “I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” (Udike,
A&P by John Updike and Araby by James Joyce are about young men who are attracted to women they meet based on the their physical appearance and nothing else. These men, however, are being portrayed unrealistically. In A&P, the protagonist Sammy makes an unintelligent decision based on his misogynistic manager 's behaviour. Araby portrays it 's main character as sacrificing heavily because of the influence of an attractive woman. Both characters are depicted unfairly and unrealistically as simple creatures with untrained and impetuous minds. Updike and Joyce have both fictionalized the actions of these males in unrealistic ways that lead one to believe, unjustly, that teen males have no mental capability outside of lusting after females.
John Updike’s “A & P,” Richard Wright’s “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” and James Joyce’s “Araby”
In the short story A&P by John Updike, the story is told in a first person narrative of a teenage boy working as a cashier in an A&P grocery store on a hot summer day. The story begins with the teenage boy named Sammy becoming preoccupied by a group of three teenage girls that walk into the grocery store wearing bathing suits. Sammy admires the girl's beauty as most nineteen year old adolescent boys would, in a slightly lewd and immature nature. His grammar is flawed and he is clearly not of an upper-class family, his job appears to be a necessity for a son of a family that is not well off. The name he gives the girl who seems to be the object of his desire, Queenie, portrays a social difference from himself. Sammy further imagines the differences in class and living style when he describes Queenie's voice as "kind of tony, the way it ticked over 'picked up' and 'snacks'." He imagines her with aristocratic home life in describing “her father and the other men were standing around in ice-cream coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a big glass plate and they were holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in them."Sammy compares his own parents occasions, where they serve their guests "lemonade and if it's a real racy affair Schlitz in tall glasses with 'They'll Do It Every Time' cartoons stenciled on."
...e, Sammy becomes an overthinker instead of an unrealistic believer which becomes his new worldview at the end of "A & P".
One example of irony found in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is when Bottom is turned into a donkey. He was turned into a donkey by Puck but he is unaware. The audience knows though, which makes this an example of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when the audience or other characters know something that a specific character. Bottom is making jokes about being an ‘ass’ because he thinks his friends are making fun of him but he actually is an ass.
“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.
The main characters in “A&P” by John Updike and “Araby” by James Joyce experience an epiphany. Sammy and Araby’s individual quests gave them a perception of the harsh actualities that come with adulthood. Epiphany helped Sammy and Araby gain experience and knowledge. Overall, epiphany is significant to both “A&P” and “Araby”.
One example of dramatic irony is when Oedipus is looking for the killer of the king Laius-his father. The irony here is that he is looking for himself because he is the murder of his father. Oedipus knows that he killed someone, but what he does not know is that it was Laius, the one he murder. Oedipus wants to punish the person who killed Laius, but we, the audience know that Oedipus was the one who killed Laius. Also Oedipus married Jocasta without knowing that she is his mother. We, the audience knew that he was Jocasta's son, but he was unaware of that.
In “A&P” by John Updike, the protagonist Sammy struggles for freedom. He fantasizes of breaking free from authorities and his working class position in A&P. He becomes smitten when he encounter with a girl he calls Queenie, who becomes a symbol that represents his longing desires where he sees an opportunity to escape through her. On the other hand, in “Araby” James Joyce shows an inexperience narrator who looks for an escape since he is always alienated in darkness so he seeks for a "light," in which, he sees it in Mangan’s sister. He instantly became captivated with her, ultimately thinking of going to the Bazaar to give her a gift will grant a secure relationship between them. Despite the differences, the role of romance comes into play when both
An example of this is when Susie talks about how simple it was to sync the watch to a person’s iPhone. This is ironic because Susie mentions the setup process which involved multiple steps, in order to sync the watch to the phone. This use of irony satirizes Apple’s design to the consumer. It is effective in showing how Apple’s innovation is not so innovative because of how complex their products can be to the consumers. The use of verbal irony can also be seen, towards the end of the video where they talk about privacy. In this last segment of the video, Jim the “CEO” of Apple talks about how they take privacy serious. However, this statement is ironic because afterwards he mentions, “we granted a live-stream of your location to the NSA.” Matthias use of irony in this section targets Apple's issue with privacy amongst their users. This is how we see irony be put to use in Matthias’s
An example of this is, Beth says to Sally (who is covered in mud), "Oh Sally, you look so nice today!" The comment from Beth is made out of spite, simply rude and unkind. Sally understands that Beth's real meaning is not what was said. The second form of irony is situational, this form is often confused with cosmic, the difference between the two is minimal. Situational irony is a contradiction between what is expected to happen and what happens.