A&P and Araby Essays

“Araby,” is a story of emotional passion carefully articulated by the author, James Joyce, to mark the end of childhood and the start of adolescence. It is told from the perspective of a young boy who is filled with lust for his friend, Mangan’s, sister. He lives in a cheerless town on a street hosting simply complacent families who own brown faced houses that stare vacantly into one another. The boy temporarily detaches himself from this gloomy atmosphere and dwells on the keeper of his affection. Only when he journeys to a festival titled Araby, does he realize that his attempt at winning the heart of Mangan’s sister has been done in an act of vanity. Joyce takes advantage of literary elements such as diction and imagery to convey an at times dreary and foolishly optimistic tone.

Joyce’s “Araby” and Bambara’s “Lesson” pose surprising similarities to each other. Despite the narrators’ strikingly clear differences, such as time period, ethnicity, social class, and gender the characters have important similarities. Both narrators are at crucial developmental stages in their lives, are faced with severe adversities, and have a point of clarity that affects their future.

I think that these two stories represent the inner struggle that we all have in our endeavors to achieve perfection, and hide our own faults from the world. These efforts will eventually drag some of to our ends.

The main point is the young man’s love for an inconceivable lady who unknowingly provokes the man into sensual and passionate rage that he begins to trouble “sexual impulses for those of honor and chivalry” (Wells, 1993. The two pieces are as closely related as any literary work, even though Updike took Joyce’s original work and evolved it. It can be argued by going at details that Updike lost no time to shape A&P as much after Araby. For example, one feature that attracts young men is the whiteness and highlight of a girls’ skin. In both pieces, the audience should not take this certain detail gently, for the meaning is essential to the other components of the story, especially as they partake with female obsession. Attracted to the milky softness and “the white curve of her neck” (Joyce 32) proves the vast concern and interest Joyce’s protagonist place in the more detailed features; as well as, Updike’s personality is equal as mesmerized by the desire of his lady’s “long white prima-donna legs” (A&P 188).

John Updike’s A&P and James Joyce’s Araby are very similar yet very different in many ways. Each short story has a normal kid with an obsession over a girl. The big difference between Sammy in A&P and Jimmy in Araby is just that they were raised differently and have different values. The way Jimmy talks about his fantasy girl is on a more religious level while Sammy in other words is kind of impolite about how he describes the three girls that walk into the market. From the narrator’s point of view in each story to the use of imagery and the main characters motivation, each story has multiple points of comparison to compare and contrast.

The plot in “A&P” begins when the three girls who walk into the grocery store wearing their bathing suits. The conflict of the plot is the the girls who walked into the grocery store wearing nothing but their bathing suits. In this time period it was socially unacceptable for girls to walk around showing a lot of skin. The manager, Lengel confronted the girls for dressing inappropriately and because of this Sammy quits his job right after Lengle confronted the girls. Sammy removed his apron and bow tie and walked out of the store. When Sammy gets outside he expects the girls to be waiting for him but they are gone. The plot in “Araby” starts by the narrator telling the readers how he is obsessed with Mangan’s sister. He says “Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped” (Joyce 331). Mangan's sister tells the narrator about the Araby. She tells him that she wants to go but cannot. The narrator decides that he is going to go to the Araby to get his crush a gift. When he gets there most of the stalls are closed and he does not have enough money to buy her anything so he comes home with nothing. The

The similarities between the stories may not appear very apparent at first over closer analyzation the appear more apparent .Both stories are focused around a brother and a sister whom

A&P by John Updike and Araby by James Joyce are two short stories that have multiple differences and similarities. A&P is about a teenager and his lust for young ladies and Araby is about a young boy who had a crush on a older girl. I will be comparing and contrasting the portrayal of women, love and epiphany in the two short stories A&P and Araby.

They regret what they did in that day. In “A&P”, Sammy’s parents will not be that happy when he gets home and when the narrator from “Araby” gets home he will not be happy either. This is shown when he says “Gazing up in the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided from vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (Araby 5). This describes how he is mad and confused on what happened that day. He is also confused on his relationship with Mangan's sister. Sammy felt like he had a relationship with the girls when he had no relationship at all. Both of these characters felt like they had a relationship going until they tried to be there unsuspected hero which did not work out for either

The main character of “Araby” and “A&P” differ in just about every way imaginable. In “A&P”, the main character, Sammy, is in the late stages of his adolescence; whereas, the boy in “Araby” new to this stage of life. Yet, they both end up misconceiving emotions for girls who have a higher social class than them. For example, in “Araby” although age is never explicitly stated, we assume that that newly pubescent boy becomes infatuated with his friends older sister

This is shown in “A & P” when Sammy quits his job in protest over the girls being mistreated. He hopes to impress the girls with this. It is this example of self-deception that both stories concentrate that brings the young man to his emotional knees as he is forced to return to normal life after the rejection by the girls. For example, one aspect of the girls that fascinates and interests both boys is the whiteness of the girls' skin. In “Araby” the boy mentions the softness and "the white curve of her neck". This demonstrates the interest he places in the less noticed features. Sammy is equally as enthralled by the sensuality of his lady's "long white prima-donna legs". Also, in “A &P”, Sammy has found himself holding a dollar bill that he obtained from his lady love, to which he says to himself" it just having come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known".

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

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

The story of “Araby” is that of a young boy probably about the age of adolescence who is having his first crush on his friends sister. Although the boy seems to have no intention of realistically perusing the situation when the girl

Having a priest, Mrs. Mercer, and the uncle they boy started to learn some ways about the real truth about adulthood, but after he visits Araby he’s able to understand what he did to make him understand what he did wrong. Araby from trying to develop from a child into an adult makes him excited where he can have a close chance to show purity for his love and hope but at the end his strong belief did not accomplish. As an alternative the boy feels that his absolute feeling of disappointment went