At first, Sharon tries to see life from his perspective with his childhood background when he used to live in Tehran. When Al was young, “In this happy, balanced world, [he] was the neighbourhood marble king” (313). This passage is relevant because it shows how Al felt as a kid. Sharon tries to understand her husband’s dreams, fears and feelings through the way he was brought up in his natal country. By imagining him as a king, the narrator understands how Al has always felt like he deserved an important place in this world. Moreover, Sharon understands more Al’s need for power as he resembles Dickens a lot when it comes to love relationships. The two adulterous husbands are admired by their younger mistresses, as we can see with Shay’s image of Al: “she also assumed her inspiring supervisor, blessed in every aspect of life, must be happily married too” (168). This quote shows how both Nelly and Al’s mistresses were younger women who admired the two men, which is exactly what Al and Dickens must have been looking for in the affairs: a sense of power, importance. By giving Dickens his place in her story, Sharon is accepting that even in every great man, there is a portion of humanity. Finally, Al and the prince in the Arabian nights’ story told in the book share the same charming, confident, and arrogant traits. Sharon’s telling of “The
In the story “Araby,” the boy has a negative view of the community. Many aspects of his life affect the way he sees the things around him. For example, because of his uncle, he is unable to reach the bazaar in time. This makes him angry and frustrated. Although the boy reminds his uncle about the bazaar, his uncle forgets and comes home very late and the boy says to himself, “I asked him to give me the money to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten (25).” He teases the boy and tells him not to go, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” meaning working too hard with no fun makes you a boring person. Because all the boy’s desires are focused on his goal of getting the gift at the bazaar, he becomes frustrated. The boys’ uncle is one of the people the boy is around all the time; this frustration causes him to become very jittery and get irritated with the world around him. By things like the clock ticking it gradually drove him to just have to totally change his train of thought and just dwell on the girl and the boy thinks, “...
James Joyce’s “Araby” and the story of “A & P” by John Updike have many characteristic similarities as well as literary traits. These stories focus on a young man trying to learn the difference between the romantic fantasies that play in their mind and the bitterness that reality can bring to a young man. In both stories a young man has built an unrealistic expectation of women only to meet the tragic despair of being rejected by the object of their boyish fantasy. In both of these stories the authors choose to show that life is not always what it may always appear.
The Arabian Nights share folktales about the violence and consequences which arise from adultery and deviate sexual behavior. The tales gives the readers an idea of how multicultural traditions existed and survived. The corruption which exists through religions and beliefs is the reason such behaviors are still practice today.
While “The Wish to Be a Red Indian” and “Rejection” are different in structure but similar in style, they convey the same desire for escape. The two vignette seem to belong in Franz Kafka’s “Meditation” because of they have this conception of escape. After all, to meditate is to escape the physical world in order to look within oneself. Entertainment in general, including the practice of reading novels for enjoyment, is a form of escapism that allows people to relieve themselves from the banal aspects of daily life.
The unnamed narrator states that he is not expecting anyone to believe the extraordinarily strange story that he is about to recount; however, he proceeds to lay out the events as he saw them. Further into the story the reader finds out exactly why the narrator is not to be trusted – he is an alcoholic. The narrator begins fighting his inner demons a...
A person’s life is often a journey of study and learning from errors and mistakes made in the past. In both James Joyce’s Araby and John Updike’s A&P, the main characters, subjected to the events of their respective stories, are forced to reflect upon their actions which failed to accomplish their original goal in impressing another character. Evidently, there is a similar thematic element that emerges from incidents in both short stories, which show maturity as an arduous process of learning from failures and a loss of innocence. By analyzing the consequences of the interaction of each main character; the Narrator in Araby and Sammy in A&P; and their persons of infatuation, Mangan’s sister
...the future to see that his life is not ruined by acts of immaturity. And, in “Araby”, we encounter another young man facing a crisis of the spirit who attempts to find a very limiting connection between his religious and his physical and emotional passions. In all of these stories, we encounter boys in the cusp of burgeoning manhood. What we are left with, in each, is the understanding that even if they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, we can. These stories bind all of us together in their universal messages…youth is something we get over, eventually, and in our own ways, but we cannot help get over it.
As described in the novel, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, in literature every trip taken by a character is a quest. “The real reason for a quest never involves the stated reason. In fact, more often than not, the quester fails at the stated task” (Foster, 3). In “Araby”, the narrator travels to the bazaar for the sole purpose of impressing a girl by returning with a gift for her. Yet, the narrator leaves with a new realization instead of a present. “The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge. That’s why questers are so often young, inexperienced, immature, sheltered” (Foster, 3). The quest allowed the narrator to come to a self realization about his foolish idealism. The narrator romanticized Mangan’s sister and the bazaar which led to his imminent
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.
This novel and film commentary analysis or interpretation will be first summarised and then critiqued. The summary will be divided into twenty- four episodes. While summarising it is well to remember that the film was made out of the book.
When a person becomes trapped in a situation that stems from an individual with greater authority, being manipulative can be a very promising method to escape. The Thousand and One Nights does a very good job of being a good example of someone in this situation that uses stories within a story to capture encapsulate the attention of the reader. Despite the many little stories that go into the text, the main story behind it all is about a king named King Shahrayar and how he goes insane after catching his wife having sexual relations with a slave. After he sees this happen, he realizes that he can never trust any woman again and none of them are trustworthy. By expressing his views on women, he decides to marry a different woman every night, then the next morning have them killed by beheading. This is an ongoing event that brings death to most of the women in the village. Soon after, the king’s Vizier’s daughter, Shahrazad, came up with a brilliant idea that will end up saving her fellow countrywomen and hopefully keep the king from murdering so many innocent people. Her method behind all this is by telling the kind a different story every night that leaves him on a cliffhanger, making him curious enough to keep her alive for another day to continue her story. Shahrazad keeps herself spared from the king because of her cunning, and compassionate personality.
First romantic encounters by young boys are often wrought with many different emotions and illusions. In “Araby”, a portrayal of a young boy’s experience of romantic reality, the reader is witness to the narrator’s physical, emotional and chronological journey. The emotional reactions, anguish and anger, show the importance of the events in the young boy’s life. The deprecating word vanity is significant to the story’s theme, because while anguish and anger are emotional reactions, the admission of vanity is a severe moral judgment of oneself. Anguish is regarded as the key emotion in the young boy’s childhood. In James Joyce’s “Araby”, the exaggerated anguish of the narrator seems quite pretentious given the reality of his youthful perception.
In James Joyce’s Araby, a young boy finds himself in love with an older girl. The girl, Mangan’s sister, refuses to love him back and instead ignores him. This crushes the boy and makes his hunger for her even more stronger. He sometimes finds himself hopelessly alone in the darkness thinking about her, awaiting for the day she would recognize his devotion to her. “ At night in my bedroom…her image came between me and the page I strove to read (805).” “At last she spoke to me (805).” She asked him if he was going to attend a popular carnival called Araby. Unfortunately, she was unable to go, and it was up to him to bring her something back. This became his journey and adventure that he could not wait for. “I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days (805).” When he finally arrived at Araby he found himself, once again alone in the darkness, due to the fact that it was closing time. Nearly all the stalls were closed down already, except one. When he approached to the open stall to buy a special present for his loved one, he was by the saleswomen’s mean and annoyed tone of voice, when she asked him if he would like to buy anything. “She seem to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty (807).” His only response was a disappointed “No thank you (807).” He was obviously heartbroken and shocked that he was unable to accomplish his task, and make the love of his life love him the same way he loves her. This young boy is introduced to disappointment of disillusionment through the themes of isolation, dark and light images, and hopelessness an decay.
Soraya: Amir’s wife, a source of peace in his life but also an reminder of his past and the guilt that it holds (due to her own shaky past). Soraya is stable for Amir, a kind and intelligent