Comparing Araby And A & P

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

Sammy are young teenage boys who are infatuated with woman around them.

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”,

who he thinks is the most beautiful (Cain 262). Sammy dreams of his life with her and starts letting his attraction for Queenie influence his decisions. When Lengel, the A & P manager tells the girls to leave, Sammy is driven by his infatuation and quits the A & P. He does this out of hope that the girls will be outside waiting for him: “I look around for my girls, but they’re gone, of course.” (Cain 266). Here it is shown that Sammy realizes that he let his attraction to the girls cloud his judgment, making him lose his job. Both the young boy and Sammy grow as they realize their decisions were shaped by vanity and in both cases led quickly to an emotional fall (Wells, par. 4)
Another similarity between the two stories is point-of-view. In “Araby” and “A & P” the point-of-view is first person perspective. This allows an intimate look at the thoughts, feelings, as well as flaws of the protagonists. This is shown as the young boy and Sammy describe their attractions for women in their respective stories and the moment when they realize their vanities. In “Araby”, the young boy uses a formal language of passion from the books he reads. He says “her image accompanied me in the places most hostile to romance” to describe his attraction to Mangan’s sister (Cain 167). When he learns how his vanity shaped his decision he says “my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (Cain 170). Both of these examples of first person point-of-view show a more intimate look at his feelings of how Mangan’s sister romantically intrigues him and how upset he is when he finally understands how his infatuation misleads him. In “A & P”, Sammy uses an informal slang to describe the three girls and his feelings after quitting the A & P. Sammy labels the girls “Queenie”, “Plaid”, and “Big tall goony goon” (Cain 265). These names reveal what he notices most about the girls, with Queenie being his main point of attraction. When Sammy quits the A & P, he says “my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” (Cain 266). This shows his feelings toward quitting the A & P because now he has no job and the girls did not stay for him after quitting in their defense. These examples of first person point-of-view show a more intimate look at the thoughts and feelings of the protagonists in the stories. The limitations of the first person point-of-view show the vanities of the young boy and Sammy because only their thoughts are shown. In both cases the boys assumed the women of their respective infatuations would reciprocate their feelings but soon find out they are both “a creature driven and derided by vanity” and that the girls were not really interested in them (Cain 170).
The role of language contrasts between “Araby” and “A & P.” In “Araby”, the young boy uses a formal language with passion and emotion. This emphasizes how he wishes to be more mature and experienced. The formal language is a compensation for his lack of experience in his life and with women. “My body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires” (Cain 167). Here the young boy is exaggerating his feelings for Mangan’s sister with language of passion. In “A & P”, Sammy uses informal slang. The informal language emphasizes the immaturity and inexperience of Sammy with women. He uses slang, like describing a dollar bill that had "just come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known,” which shows him as a typical teenage boy (Cain 265). The two stories are different in the style of language but use the same purpose, to emphasize how the young boy and Sammy are inexperienced and naïve.
In both “Araby” by James Joyce and “A & P” by John Updike have elements that can be compared and contrasted. Similar use of character development and point-of-view are used to emphasize how the inexperienced protagonists are misled by infatuation and change as they realize their vanities. The contrasting use of role of language is used to emphasize the boys true characters, as they are overconfident as a result of being vain.