The Reality of World in Araby and Boys and Girls

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Our perception about the world change as we grow up and experience the reality of life. This is the necessary and universal experience that we all must undergo to face the world successfully. The protagonists in James Joyce’s “Araby” and Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls experience a common initiation of how different the world is, compared to how they would like to see. The reader is given a glance into the lives of two adolescents. The protagonists in both stories are of the growing age and their perceptions about the world change. These changes contradict with their past perceptions and leads life in a different direction. Both Joyce and Munro unfold series of bizarre life thrilling experience from the daily life of the protagonists to create the universal lesson of how different the world is, compare to how they would like to see. But the way, this necessary and universal lesson learn differs with each protagonist. The boy’s initiation in “Araby” comes, when the girl (Mangan’s sister) come in his life. After his encounter with her his life completely change forever and he wants to be his own man. The initiation of the Young girl in “Boys and Girls” comes, after watching the shooting of horse “Mack” and letting “Flora” the other horse, out of the gate. Letting Flora free is indeed the protagonist’s way of watching world. After watching shooting of “Mack” she does not want “Flora” to face the same miserable death like “Mack”. She thinks letting Flora free save Flora from shooting.

The story “Araby” opens with a description of North Richmond Street. This gives reader the first view of the young boy's world. The Richmond Street “was a quiet street except.....the boys free” (Joyce 345). The young boy in “Araby” lives with his aunt a...

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...n this world. After realizing of truth about life and world and disobeying her father, she goes into her room. Makes her part of the room fancier and “keep my section separate from Liard” (Munro 335). After finding out the truth her father called her a girl. She “didn't protest that, even in my heart.” (Munro 336)

In “Araby” and “Boys and Girls” the plots illustrate that both of the adolescents experience the common phase of growing up. They learn the universal lesson of how different the world is, compared to how they would like to see. The young boy in “Araby” grows into a young man and the girl in “Boys and Girls” accepts the reality that she is a girl. Freeing the horse was like freeing herself. The protagonists in both stories go through learning experience that we all go through, but the way in which these learning experience occur differs with each of us.

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