In “A&P” by John Updike, the protagonist Sammy struggles for freedom. He fantasizes of breaking free from authorities and his working class position in A&P. He becomes smitten when he encounter with a girl he calls Queenie, who becomes a symbol that represents his longing desires where he sees an opportunity to escape through her. On the other hand, in “Araby” James Joyce shows an inexperience narrator who looks for an escape since he is always alienated in darkness so he seeks for a "light," in which, he sees it in Mangan’s sister. He instantly became captivated with her, ultimately thinking of going to the Bazaar to give her a gift will grant a secure relationship between them. Despite the differences, the role of romance comes into play when both …show more content…
when the narrator wants to give Mangan’s sister a gift at the bazaar as a token of his love displaying that “the syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and casted Eastern enchantment over me” (108). He expects the bazaar to be colorful and bright just like her. However, when the narrator reaches to the bazaar he sees that the gallery at the bazaar was closing and the lights was out leading the place to become dark (111). The narrator suddenly noticed that the Bazaar was not as bright and colorful as he expected it to be and that giving Mangan’s sister a gift is meaningless because it does not establish a relationship between them. The Bazaar is dark just like before and as the narrator is glaring at the darkness he saw himself “as a creature driven and derided by vanity” (111). This discusses that the narrator is in agony understanding that nothing has changed his dark world and accepting it was childish. Hence, waking up from his fantasy and experiencing his first let down as a part of growing
Galchen creates the character of her narrator to be very similar to that of the young narrator in “Araby” in a modern setting. In their youth, each narrator becomes infatuated and obsessed with someone who does not realize. The narrator of “Araby” falls in love with his friend Mangan’s sister, as seen in that he states that “when she came out on the doorstep [his] heart leaped” (123). He forms an obsession with her, as evidenced by the fact that he “had never spoken to her . . . and yet her name was like a summons to all [his] foolish blood” and in that “her image accompanied [him] even in places the most hostile to romance” (123).
"Araby" by James Joyce and "A & P" by John Updike are two stories which, in spite of their many differences, have much in common. In both of these initiation stories, the protagonists move from one stage of life to another and encounter disillusionment along the way. Looking back upon his boyhood in Irish Catholic Dublin in the early 1900's, the narrator of "Araby"gives an account of his first failed love. Captivated by Mangan's older sister, the boy promises to bring her a gift from a bazaar that wears the mystical name of Araby. Sammy, a nineteen-year-old cashier at the local A & P in an unnamed coastal town north of Boston, narrates "A & P." Like Joyce's boy, Sammy also attempts to win the attention of a beautiful girl by making a chivalric gesture. In both cases, romance gives way to reality, and conflict occurs when the protagonist finds himself in discord with the values of the society in which he lives. Joyce's "Araby" and Updike's "A & P" are initiation stories in which the adolescent protagonist comes into conflict with his culture.
As the boy waits for the day he can go to the bazaar , he thinks of nothing exceptMangan’s sister. The boy sees her when he is going to sleep , when he wakes , and in school in his papers. The boy wants nothing more than to see Mangan’s sister again , but ,in his mind for him to do that he needs to get her something from Araby. The boy is so charged from his encounter that he says he wishes to annihilate the days separating him from going to Araby and ultimately Mangan’s sister . Finally when the day has arrived that he can go to Araby he has to wait for Uncle to get home . To the boys dismay his ...
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 her story, "Araby," James Joyce concentrates on character rather than on plot to reveal the ironies inherent in self-deception. On one level "Araby" is a story of initiation, of a boy’s quest for the ideal. The quest ends in failure but results in an inner awareness and a first step into manhood. On another level the story consists of a grown man's remembered experience, for the story is told in retrospect by a man who looks back to a particular moment of intense meaning and insight. As such, the boy's experience is not restricted to youth's encounter with first love. Rather, it is a portrayal of a continuing problem all through life: the incompatibility of the ideal, of the dream as one wishes it to be, with the bleakness of reality. This double focus-the boy who first experiences, and the man who has not forgotten-provides for the dramatic rendering of a story of first love told by a narrator who, with his wider, adult vision, can employ the sophisticated use of irony and symbolic imagery necessary to reveal the story's meaning.
Romantic gestures have been seen as a useful motive to win hearts of women for centuries. However, as society constantly changes, the effectiveness of these chivalrous acts has diminished. In James Joyce’s “Araby” and John Updike’s “A&P”, this theory is explored, both telling the story of a boy whose efforts to impress the girl of their desires fail. As said by Well’s in his critical analysis of these stories, “Both the protagonists have come to realize that romantic gestures—in fact, that the whole chivalric view [sic] --- are, in modern times, counterproductive”. These stories, despite the differences between the two characters, clearly show that the character’s world is changing, with chivalry becoming more obsolete.
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, who is also the protagonist, has built up incredible, yet unrealistic, expectations of women, having focused upon one in particular towards which he places all his unrequited affection. The expectation these men hold when finally "face to face with their object of worship" (Wells, 1993, p. 127) is what sends the final and crushing blow of reality: The rejection they suffer is far too great for them to bear.
The boy from “Araby” develops a distorted view of reality through his love for Mangan’s sister. His view of the world shifts when he is under the influence of her. He would describe the world around him extravagantly: “My eyes were often full of tears [...] and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. [...] [M]y body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires” (Joyce 2).
The short story “Araby” by James Joyce is told by what seems to be the first person point of view of a boy who lives just north of Dublin. As events unfold the boy struggles with dreams versus reality. From the descriptions of his street and neighbors who live close by, the reader gets an image of what the boy’s life is like. His love interest also plays an important role in his quest from boyhood to manhood. The final trip to the bazaar is what pushes him over the edge into a foreshadowed realization. The reader gets the impression that the narrator is the boy looking back on his epiphany as a matured man. The narrator of “Araby” looses his innocence because of the place he lives, his love interest, and his trip to the bazaar.
... quest ends when he arrives at the bazaar and realizes with slow, tortured clarity that Araby is not at all what he imagined. It is tawdry and dark and thrives on the profit motive and the eternal lure its name evokes in men. The boy realizes that he has placed all his love and hope in a world that does not exist except in his imagination. He feels angry and betrayed and realizes his self-deception. He feels he is "a creature driven and derided by vanity" and the vanity is his own. At no other point in the story is characterization as brilliant as at the end. Joyce draws his protagonist with strokes designed to let us recognize in "the creature driven and derided by vanity" a boy who is initiated into knowledge through a loss of innocence who does not fully realize the incompatibility between the beautiful, innocent world of the imagination and the very real world of fact. In "Araby," Joyce uses the boyhood character with the manhood narrator to embody the theme of his story. Joyce, James. “Araby”. Literature and It’s Writers.
The narrator alienated himself from friends and family which caused loneliness and despair, being one of the first themes of the story. He developed a crush on Mangan's sister, who is somewhat older than the boys, however he never had the confidence to confess his inner-most feelings to her. Mentally, he began to drift away from his childlike games, and started having fantasies about Mangan's sister in his own isolation. He desperately wanted to share his feelings, however, he didn't know how to explain his "confused adoration." (Joyce 390). Later in the story, she asked him if he was going to Araby, the bazaar held in Dublin, and he replied, "If I go I will bring you something.' (Joyce 390). She was consumed in his thoughts, and all he could think about was the upcoming bazaar, and his latest desire. The boy's aunt and uncle forgot about the bazaar and didn't understand his need to go, which deepened the isolation he felt (Borey).
The visual and emblematic details established throughout the story are highly concentrated, with Araby culminating, largely, in the epiphany of the young unnamed narrator. To Joyce, an epiphany occurs at the instant when the essence of a character is revealed, when all the forces that endure and influence his life converge, and when we can, in that moment, comprehend and appreciate him. As follows, Araby is a story of an epiphany that is centered on a principal deception or failure, a fundamental imperfection that results in an ultimate realization of life, spirit, and disillusionment. The significance is exposed in the boy’s intellectual and emotional journey from first love to first dejection,
Throughout “Araby”, the main character experiences a dynamic character shift as he recognizes that his idealized vision of his love, as well as the bazaar Araby, is not as grandiose as he once thought. The main character is infatuated with the sister of his friend Mangan; as “every morning [he] lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door…when she came on the doorstep [his] heart leaped” (Joyce 108). Although the main character had never spoken to her before, “her name was like a summons to all [his] foolish blood” (Joyce 108). In a sense, the image of Mangan’s sister was the light to his fantasy. She seemed to serve as a person who would lift him up out of the darkness of the life that he lived. This infatuation knew no bounds as “her image accompanied [him] even in places the most hostile to romance…her name sprang to [his] lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which [he] did not understand” (Joyce 109). The first encounter the narrator ex...
The short story “Araby” written by James Joyce tells the story of an unnamed boy who lives on North Richmond Street. The short story starts off by giving the reader a brief overview about the boy's life and other relevant background information. It is soon expressed that the boy has a very intense infatuation with his friends Mangan’s sister. The story goes on to explain his interaction with this girl which leads him to attend an event later that week. By James Joyce’s use of literary devices, the short story is able to progress and give the reader an accurate insight into this young boy's life and experiences.
Araby is about escaping into the world of fantasy. The narrator is infatuated with his friend's sister; he hides in the shadows, peering secluded from a distance trying to spy her "brown figure"(Joyce 38). She is the light in his fantasy, someone who will lift him out of darkness. I see many parallels to my life as a boy growing up in the inner city of Jersey City. We looked for escape also, a trip uptown to Lincoln Park, or take a train ride to New York City where we would gaze at the beauties on 7th Ave.