Araby John Updike Analysis

Love is... Love is one of the basic instincts to which all of the human race are affected. In James Joyce's “Araby” and John Updike's “A & P” they show different ways that the protagonists are affected but these acts are unrecognized by the recipients of their love. The authors manage to use a tone, style and language that eases the reader’s thoughts into the same familiar situation of a crush even though they are written some fifty years apart. Joyce and Updike take this familiar feeling and have the protagonists struggling over their actions. In “Araby” the protagonist believes he should visit the bazaar because his love, Mangan’s sister wants to go but “she c [an] not go, she sa [ys], because there [is] a retreat that week at her convent” …show more content…
Most crushes are not apparent to the other party and are built on fantasy and passion. In “Araby” the narrator is never given a name not even his love interest has a name. The narrator’s interactions are what he sees in a haloed light, the way “her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side” (3) is invisible to the world and only he notices. There is one sentence that is actually spoken between them and the others recollected by him. It is confusing to tell whether it is in his mind or this actually happens. The same can be said for the way some crushes are only played out in our imaginations but seem real. While Sammy in “A & P” gives details of his feelings towards Queenie that take into account his emotions. “...this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from her shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. I mean, it was more than pretty” (3) , shows his delight and not of the previous misgivings about her entering the store with just a bikini …show more content…
Sammy’s future was almost promised by his parents friendship with Lengel and his infatuation with Queenie makes Sammy commit to some soul searching of his own. In the store, Sammy stands alone strong and immovable in his position against Lengel but once outside he feels the implications of walking away. He is now on his own and that is the uncomfortable or alien feeling. For the narrator in “Araby” his feelings are foreign to him in the way that society frowns upon a priest’s love of a woman. The narrator feels his disgust the moment he realizes that his visit to the bazaar was by the command of love. The realization that the infatuation will never amount to anything, but a dream, is not devastating. It is a rite-of-passage that he was destined to pass