araby and the things they carried

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James Joyce with “Araby”, and Timmy O’Brien with “The Things They Carried” both demonstrated similar characteristic traits of the narrators. The main characters of these short stories both have a deep crush on someone. However, “Araby” and “The Things They Carried” take place in very different places from each other. “Araby” has the main setting in a neighborhood while “The Things They Carried” was at war in Vietnam. The stories take place in different places from each other, but both authors had the same idea when writing their ideas of the characters personality traits.
The narrators of the two short stories, “Araby” and “The Things They Carried” both present their protagonist to feel adoration towards a female. They are very open minded characters with strong personalities. James Joyce had described Magnan’s sister to have a strong effect on his emotions. ”I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration” (Joyce 318). These main characters share similar romantic dreams they both have about the girl they deeply dream of. Joyce and O’Brien both describe how each character faces challenges. O’Brien the soldier and Joyce from the “suburbs” are both young men with the challenge of growing into manhood as they are trying to grow intellectually. Towards the end of the stories O’Brien and Joyce both have destructed dreams that they have to emotionally overcome. The narrators have a fantasy for a girl that is not physically there to love them back. Joyce does not have experience so he thinks of Magnan’s sister as being a “goddess”. “The boy, at last, glimpses reality unadorned; he no longer deceives himself with his usual romanticizing. For the moment, at l...

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...ong setting where it took place. “Araby” only took place in a small town neighborhood and Joyce didn’t have much going on around him besides his mind and eyes always following this girl.

Works Cited

Joyce, James. "Araby" Literature and its Writers. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 1-1736. Print.
Obrien, Timmy. “The Things They Carried” Literature and its Writers. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 1-1736. Print.
Smith, Jack. "The Things He Carries: For Tim O’Brien, The Vietnam War Has Remained A Crucible In His Fiction, But The Power Of Imagination And Memory, And 'Our Elusive Interior Worlds,' Loom Large, Too." Writer 123.7 (2010): 16. Biography Reference Center. Web. 1 Mar. 2014.
Stone, Harry. "Araby" and the Writings of James Joyce. N.p.: n.p., n.d. EBSCO. Web. .

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