“A & P” by John Updike and “Araby” by James Joyce are two short stories that have both similarities and differences between them. Even though these stories were written in different countries, at different times, they still have many similarities. Both stories are about teenage boys, that live normal lives and both go through changes due to girls by the end of the story. By looking at the setting and the context included in both stories, the reader can notice the similarities and differences between them. In both stories, the literary device that most readers realize is unique is the setting the stories take place in. The protagonist in both stories give details about their daily lives and the city’s and neighborhoods they each live in. As the characters explain this, they also give insight on what their opinions are about where they live. For example, the setting in “A & P” takes place at an A & P grocery store north of Boston, five miles …show more content…
One of the differences between the two is the character in “Araby” seems to be a lot creepier like. For example, the narrator says, “Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen.” (248). In “A & P,” Sammy doesn’t show any traits such as this. In this story, the protagonist starts to fall for the girl who lives across the street from him. After going days after days without actually talking to her, one day she came up and talked to him. The narrator said, “she asked me if I was going to the Araby. I forgot if I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar; she said she would love to go” (249). After the narrator found out the girl wanted but couldn’t go he was determined to go and bring her a present home. On the day of the bazaar, due to late money obligations, the narrator was too late and all the stalls were
The main character in John Updike's short story “A&P” is Sammy. The story's first-person context gives the reader a unique insight toward the main character's own feelings and choices, as well as the reasons for the choices. The reader is allowed to closely observe Sammy's observations and first impressions of the three girls who come to the grocery store on a summer afternoon in the early 1960s. In order to understand this short story, one must first recognize the social climate of the era, the age of the main character, and the temptation this individual faces.
Luckily, the narrator and Sammy both realize their deficiency after the situations with the other characters. In “A&P” the narrator’s turning point in his life is when he finds the bikers body in the lake next to him. In “Greasy Lake” the realization occurs after Sammy quits his job and tries to be the “hero” to those girls. In both stories, the protagonists’ have no idea what the real world is like, or how it works.
Throughout “A&P” and “Gryphon” the two characters found themselves facing a challenge that they had never had to face before. Reading both of the stories has shown that although different adversities were represented in the books they both had challenges and reactions that were similar to each other as well as very different. Sammy’s was about a store called “A&P” where the manager confronted three girls in bathing suits and Sammy had to stand up for them. Tommy’s was about a unique substitute teacher who he quite enjoyed and his journey with her, and his defending her to the other kids when one of the children gets her fired. Together and separately these two dynamic characters make up these unique stories that ensnared their reader with their thoughts, adversity and heroic actions throughout the story.
Although Rivka Galchen’s “Wild Berry Blue” and James Joyce’s “Araby” have some differences, there even more similarities. The narrators, their journeys, and their conclusions at the end of their journeys are analogous. Both attempt to win over the object of their affection through a gift, and yet thorough the purchase of that gift they realize their folly in love. As Joyce wrote “Araby” in 1914, yet Galchen did not write “Wild Berry Blue” until nearly 100 years later, Galchen may have written “Wild Berry Blue” as a modern retelling of Joyce’s classic short story.
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.
People often take their place in society for granted. They accept that position into which they are born, grow up in it, and pass that position on to their children. This cycle continues until someone is born who has enough vision to step out of his circle and investigate other ways of life in which he might thrive. One such person is embodied in the character of Sammy in A&P, by John Updike. Sammy is the narrator of the story and describes an incident in the store where he encounters a conflict between the members of two completely different worlds the world that he was born into and the world of a girl that captures his mind. Through his thoughts, attitudes, and actions, Sammy shows that he is caught between the two worlds of his customers at the A&P.
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.
In the stories written by John Updike and Jamaica Kincaid, both are completely different in terms of plot and the manner in which each were written, however through the elements of character and theme, the two can be closely associated to one another. By looking further into stories one will find that there is usually more than what meets the eye as illustrated in “Girl” and “A&P.”
World War I and World II are basically the same, right? If so, Araby, written around WWI by James Joyce, and The Flash, written around WWII by Italo Calvino, are also the same, no? Indeed, these short stories have many similarities. At the same time, both stories have many differences. Thus, it is difficult to compare both stories when considering all the details. If the subject of comparison is more specific, such as epiphany, then more emphasis and effort can be put into the comparison. In Araby, the protagonist falls in love with a girl, but love deceives him. In his moment of epiphany, “[g]azing up into the darkness [he] saw [himself] as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and [his] eyes burned with anguish and anger” (Joyce 1). In The Flash, the protagonist suddenly grasps a reality, but only for an instant: “[He] stopped, blinked: [He] understood nothing. Nothing, nothing about anything. [He] didn’t understand the reasons for things or for people, it was all senseless, absurd. And [he] started to laugh” (Calvino 1). The comparison between the epiphanies of both short stories reveals the relationship amongst the similarities and differences regarding theme, symbolism and setting.
In “A&P,” the story is mostly an observation of the girls in their multiple visits to the market. Sam is very much a young and immature adult, so the reader has insight into his thinking about life before the realization at the end of the short story. There is a climax with Sammy quitting his job, and he has his epiphany afterwards. There are two major shifts in the story, with the epiphany not making up a large portion of it, and coming somewhat surprisingly with its different scope in comparison to the rest of the subject material. In contrast, “The Ball Poem” has three major parts, with the epiphany being a much greater portion of the poem. The beginning of the poem merely describes the boy and his feelings. The middle section takes on a more introspective feel and goes beyond the idea of the boy losing the ball and its implications in the grand scheme of the world. The ending features the author’s epiphany just as in “A&P,” but there is a more forceful rejection of the earlier part of the author’s life as he comes to acceptance with what is to to come later
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.
In “Araby”, author James Joyce presents a male adolescent who becomes infatuated with an idealized version of a schoolgirl, and explores the consequences which result from the disillusionment of his dreams. While living with his uncle and aunt, the main character acts a joyous presence in an otherwise depressing neighborhood. In Katherine Mansfield’s, The Garden Party, Mansfield’s depicts a young woman, Laura Sherridan, as she struggles through confusion, enlightenment, and the complication of class distinctions on her path to adulthood. Both James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield expertly use the literary elements of characterization to illustrate the journey of self-discovery while both main characters recognize that reality is not what they previously conceptualized it as.
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.
Written by the same author, “Araby” and “Eveline” are very similar in several aspects, both formal and contextual. As they are taken from the same collection of the short stories, namely “Dubliners”, these works develop the same theme – the life of those living in Dublin, their joys and problems, their ups and downs; therefore, it is logical that they share many similarities which may be traced while analyzing the main characters, the plot peculiarities, the themes and the conflict, the mood and the tone etc.