Similarities in "Araby" by James Joyce and "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The stories “Araby,” which was written by James Joyce and “Young Goodman Brown” which was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, both contain an important similarity between the reason for the protagonists feeling harassed and unhappy towards the end of the story. The similarities between both the stories are each of the protagonists are idealistic and get crushed by a reality that shocks them.
In the story “Araby” the protagonist is portrayed by the author to seem young, which limited his ability to see past his dull, dead-end neighborhood. The author explains the boy’s carefree mindset by describing how the protagonist and his friends would run through the back lanes of the houses and hide in the shadows when they reached the street again. Through all of the commotion of play, the boy never forgets to admire his friend Mangan’s sister. The boy expresses his great admiration for the girl and displays this in various ways throughout the story, such as sittings in the back room of his house alone and rubbing his palms together as he confides in himself his true feelings towards her. One thing the boy struggles with is finding the courage to tell Mangan’s sister his true feelings towards her. One morning Mangan’s sister asks the narrator if he plans to go to Araby, which is a local bazaar that was not ran by the locals. She expresses to the protagonist that she cannot attend, being that this is the most conversation Mangans sister and the narrator verbally share he immediately is overcome by his feelings for her and offers to bring her something back from the bazaar. The commitment the narrator makes to the girl sets his expectations for the bazaar so high that anything but perfection comes to him as disappointment.
The narrator display...

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...her name, and a pink ribbon from her cap flutters down from the sky. In disbelief that even his own wife who he loves had fell to yet the same temptation everyone else in the community had, the narrator has an epiphany. Instead of reaffirming him and his wife’s Paritan beliefs and impurities, the next morning the narrator exits the woods and returns to his Christian village, and every person he passes seems evil to him. The change of heart he had in the forest left him unassured of himself as well as no longer being able to trust anyone, even his own wife. This overall leaves the protagonist in and harassed and unhappy state.
Both stories displayed the same similarity, and that was the shocking reality that happened at the end of both stories. The idealistic moments that happened in both stories is the reason behind both protagonist shocked and crushed in the end.