Comparing Araby And A & P

Araby and A&P — Stories of Growth Through Failure

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

Literary critic, Walter Wells, states this in his analysis of the two pieces, writing that “both protagonists have come to realize that romantic gestures -- in fact, that the whole chivalric world view -- are, in modern times, counterproductive” (Wells 3). Both protagonists, being either a child or just a year into his adulthood, lacks a true understanding of the world around them. Motivated by their incomplete knowledge of the world and the people around them, they act out in a grand gesture, hoping to attract the attention and admiration of Mangan’s sister for the narrator in Araby and Queenie for Sammy in A&P. However, due to the same, flawed ideology of the workings of the world that motivates them to carry out their plan, it ultimately leads to their downfall. In conclusion, both pieces of literature show that life is a process of maturation by learning from one’s failures. Both the Narrator from Araby and Sammy from A&P fail in their original goal of gaining the affection of the girls through their grand gestures. Furthermore, both characters, in acting out their plan, realize their lack of understanding of the world and thus loose their innocence. Finally, through their growth, they are able to, by