Comparing James Joyce's Araby and Ernest Hemingway's A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
As divergent as James Joyce's "Araby" and Ernest Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" are in style, they handle many of the same themes. Both stories explore hope, anguish, faith, and despair. While "Araby" depicts a youth being set up for his first great disappointment, and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" shows two older men who have long ago settled for despair, both stories use a number of analogous symbols, and lap over each other thematically.
At the beginning of "Araby", the narrator describes the street's lamps as lifting their "feeble lanterns" towards an "ever-changing violet" sky (227). The colour violet is both dark and rich. The sky, this deep, mysterious colour, and always mutating, suggests the expanse of unknown beyond mortal experience. The feeble lights which fail to lick the lowest tufts of cloud resemble the people who look out into the fog of unanswerable questions; who can never hope to find anything but the shapes one reads in, like hillside skywatchers.
The narrator's character goes around looking up. First at Mangan's sister: from the shadow, from the floor, and from the subordinate position of an admirer. Then, more metaphorically, he looks up to an image he's built for himself; an expectation of beauty and treasures; an enthusiastic hope or hopeful enthusiasm that his pilgrimage to Araby will yield him if not the answer (to the question which manifests as a nameless longing), then the key to the answer. This answer is represented by Mangan's sister (whose name is not mentioned, as with the Hebrew G-d), whom the boy hopes to access through the gesture of his quest.1 At the end, the boy looks up again, like the l...
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...othing in it.
Hemingway's old man walks away from the bar with dignity, but with hope long vanished. The older waiter, another faithless man, is resigned to nothingness. His mockery of Christian prayer is not angry, but spoken with a smile and a sigh. However, as indicated by his insomnia, Nada is a cold bedfellow.
Works Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place". Kirszner and Mandell 233.
Joyce, James. "Araby". Kirszner and Mandell 226.
Kirszner, Laurie, and Stephen Mandell, eds. Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Compact Fourth Edition. New York: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000.
1This character may also stand as a sexual symbol. The bracelet she handles when she speaks of the convent may suggest that she is shackled to Catholic prudery. In any case, she still stands as "the desired", physically or metaphysically.
In the short story “Araby,” James Joyce uses religious and biblical allusions to portray a young narrator’s feelings about a girl. Through these allusions, readers gather an image of the narrator’s adoration of his friend’s, Mangan’s, sister. James Joyce’s allusions to the Bible and religion relate to the idolized image the narrator has of a girl.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
Joyce, James. “Araby”. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Eds. R.V. Cassill and Richard Bausch. Shorter Sixth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000. 427 - 431.
John Updike's “A & P” and James Joyce's “Araby” are very similar. The theme of the two stories is about a young man who is interested in figuring out the difference between reality and the fantasies of romance that play in his head and of the mistaken thoughts each has about their world, the girls, and themselves. One of the main similarities between the two stories is the fact that the main character has built up unrealistic expectations of women. Both characters have focused upon one girl in which they place all their affection. Both Sammy and the boy suffer rejection in the end. Both stories also dive into the unstable mind of a young man who is faced with one of life's most difficult lessons. The lesson learned is that things are not always as they appear to be.
Even though the two versions are extremely similar, they contain slightly different morals. When the Grimm Brothers wrote their story, the world was a different place and children did not need to be babied. That is why they chose to write such a cruel ending to their version. In the modern-day Cinderella, there is a profusion of magic and there is no violence, which is a change from the original story. By changing this and the ending, children receive a different message from the story. However, both stories give kids hope that they will live happily ever after.
James Joyce's use of religious imagery and religious symbols in "Araby" is compelling. That the story is concerned somehow with religion is obvious, but the particulars are vague, and its message becomes all the more interesting when Joyce begins to mingle romantic attraction with divine love. "Araby" is a story about both wordly love and religious devotion, and its weird mix of symbols and images details the relationship--sometimes peaceful, sometimes tumultuos--between the two. In this essay, I will examine a few key moments in the story and argue that Joyce's narrator is ultimately unable to resolve the differences between them.
How the Setting Reinforces the Theme and Characters in Araby. The setting in "Araby" reinforces the theme and the characters by using imagery of light and darkness. The experiences of the boy in James Joyce's The "Araby" illustrates how people often expect more than ordinary reality can. provide and then feel disillusioned and disappointed.
Meyer, Michael, ed. Thinking and Writing About Literature. Second Edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.
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).
...om Joyce’s childhood. The young boy may have felt anguish, but the adult that looks back at himself sees someone who desires romance and happiness. Joyce explains “Araby” as the life of a young boy who has dreams and high expectations of the world, but instead the young boy gets a bitter taste of reality.
The repetition of the word "blind" introduces the theme of light and darkness. The streets of Dublin are described as "being blind"(2236) suggesting they do not lead anywhere. The houses are personified as being sombre and having "brown imperturbable faces"(2236), creating the shift from a literal setting to a state of mind. The streets remain silent until the boys are set free from school (2236), comparing the school to a prison: mundane and repetitive, and comparing their departure from school to a type of liberation for the children.... ...
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 narrator in “Araby” is a young man who lives in an uninteresting area and dreary house in Dublin. The only seemingly exciting thing about the boy’s existence is the sister of his friend Mangum that he is hopelessly in love with; “…her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.” (Joyce 2279) In an attempt to impress her and bring some color into his own gray life, he impulsively lies to her that he is planning on attending a bazaar called Arab. He also promises the gi...
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.