A&P by John Updike and Araby by James Joyce are two very similar stories about a young boy’s experience with lust over a girl. The two boys are different ages and go to different lengths to impress the girl they want; however, each story has a similar theme, inciting incident, and final ending. A theme in both of the stories is immaturity, or ignorance. The narrator of Araby is an unnamed boy who is probably not yet an adolescent. Being a young boy in a dull town with little exposure to anything from the world outside of his, he is, by default, ignorant. His first experience with a girl is with his friend Mangan’s sister. To the narrator, Mangan’s sister a rare beauty; the feeling he gets when he sees her is something that he has never felt.
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Araby begins with the narrator’s description of the stale, predictable world in which he lives; he lives in a not-so-glamorous neighborhood that sees little activity other than the boys playing in the street. It seems that he does not have any brothers or sisters and only lives with his aunt and uncle. It can be concluded that for the narrator, excitement is a rare commodity. From his benighted perspective, Mangan’s sister literally glows with beauty: “her figure [was] defined by the light from the half-opened door”. If the narrator had other sources of emotional stimulation like siblings or a stimulating hobby, he probably would not have fallen for Mangan’s sister as hard as he did. As for Sammy in A&P, he describes the atmosphere as an uneventful Thursday afternoon; the store lacks any activity, so quite obviously the three practically naked girls completely engross his thoughts. The uneventful atmosphere of the store only exasperates the peculiarity of the situation, which in turn only encourages Sammy to continue with his discourse. As with A&P, if Sammy was not so bored, he might not have overanalyzed the situation to the point of quitting just to impress a girl he doesn’t know. Overall, the cause of action for each of the boys was an indirect consequence of their dull
Araby begins with the narrator’s description of the stale, predictable world in which he lives; he lives in a not-so-glamorous neighborhood that sees little activity other than the boys playing in the street. It seems that he does not have any brothers or sisters and only lives with his aunt and uncle. It can be concluded that for the narrator, excitement is a rare commodity. From his benighted perspective, Mangan’s sister literally glows with beauty: “her figure [was] defined by the light from the half-opened door”. If the narrator had other sources of emotional stimulation like siblings or a stimulating hobby, he probably would not have fallen for Mangan’s sister as hard as he did. As for Sammy in A&P, he describes the atmosphere as an uneventful Thursday afternoon; the store lacks any activity, so quite obviously the three practically naked girls completely engross his thoughts. The uneventful atmosphere of the store only exasperates the peculiarity of the situation, which in turn only encourages Sammy to continue with his discourse. As with A&P, if Sammy was not so bored, he might not have overanalyzed the situation to the point of quitting just to impress a girl he doesn’t know. Overall, the cause of action for each of the boys was an indirect consequence of their dull