Through the respective viewpoints of their young male protagonists, “Araby” by James Joyce and “A & P” by John Updike both highlight the different ways in which young women are idealized by the young boys within the individual stories. Though both the young boy in “Araby” and Sammy in “A & P” long for female companionship, their view of the adolescent women differs greatly. In “Araby,” the boy applies a deep, almost religious significance to Mangan's sister and so searches for an idea of transcendence. While Sammy in “A & P” sees the girls through gestures of both sexual desire as well as defiantly illustrating conformity at odds with his sense of self. In “Araby,” the young boy's perspective of Mangan—his friend’s—sister reflects a deep idealization …show more content…
The narrator states, “I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood” (Joyce 1). Although at first the young boy had hardly ever spoken to her, his admiration and idealization for Mangan’s sister was strong. His desire to impress her with a gift from the bazaar highlights his idealization and yearning to show devotion that he thinks will enhance his standing in her eyes. The young lad experiences feelings of disillusionment when he is unable to obtain a gift for the girl. On the other hand, Sammy in the story “A & P,” looks at the girls who come into his store and feels a mixture of sexual attraction and escapism. Sammy’s interaction with the girls—especially Queenie, who was seen as the head of the group of girls—is colored by lust and teenage rebellion. His comments, about the girls, such as “She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs,” are very objectifying (Updike 1). Compared to the innocent admiration the young boy in “Araby” holds for Mangan’s sister, Sammy’s inspection of the young girls is less genuine and more about self-validation. As seen from the text, “The girls, and who'd blame them, are in a hurry to get out so I say ‘I quit’ to Lengel quick enough
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
A&P and Araby were written in two different time periods and locations. However, the two stories share many similarities. In the short stories A&P by John Updike’s and James Joyce’s Araby; Sammy and the unknown character both experience a girl who they find to be God's perfect creations, living in a town in which the authors describes to be boring, dull and gloomy. But as the story progresses the characters find themselves left with nothing but empty wishes. Blinded by lust, both Sammy and Araby’s
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
Comparing Updike's A & P and Joyce's Araby 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
In “A&P” by John Updike, “Araby” by James Joyce, and “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, each story’s protagonist has a love interest from which they learn an important lesson about the dangers of giving into the desires of their infatuation. In every story, there were clear indications that all of the protagonists were suffering from infatuation. Each of them idealizes their romantic interests despite the fact that they know nothing about the person of their
Comparing and Contrasting Two Stories with Similar Characters and Themes 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 A&P by John Updike the protagonist Sammy is a young 19 year
story “Araby” was written by James Joyce and “A&P” was wrote by John Updike. Both young protagonists in the short stories live in an enviroment where everything are strictly determined and uneventful. In such enviroment, young boys are eager for changes and hope. The boy’s innouncent personailties was exposed clearly by their action and later result in the tragic ending. Although the two stories are very different in the setting, there are many similarities between the them. In the story “ A&P”. The