Joyces Araby versus Updikes A & P Essay -- James Joyce John Updike

Joyces Araby and Updikes A & P A Culture Hostile to RomanceAraby by pile Joyce and A & P by John Updike are two stories which, in spite of their many differences, have much in common. In both of these creative activity stories, the protagonists move from one stage of vivification to another and encounter disillusionment along the way. Looking back upon his boyhood in Irish Catholic Dublin in the early 1900s, the narrator of Arabygives an account of his first failed love. Captivated by Mangans older sister, the boy promises to bring her a gift from a bazaar that wears the mystical public figure of Araby. Sammy, a nineteen-year-old cashier at the local A & P in an unnamed coastal town north of Boston, narrates A & P. Like Joyces boy, Sammy also attempts to get along the attention of a beautiful girl by making a chivalric gesture. In both cases, romance gives way to reality, and conflict occurs when the protagonist finds himself in discord with the values of the society in which he actives. Joyces Araby and Updikes A & P are initiation stories in which the adolescent protagonist comes into conflict with his culture.Both protagonists live in restrictive cultures. The narrator of Araby portrays the Dublin that he grew up in as grim and oppressed by Catholicism. He begins his story with a verbal description of North Richmond Street, where the somber houses wear brown imperturbable faces and seem conscious of the decent lives within them (Joyce 728). In this description, Joyce links decency and a stifled life together. Filled with cold empty gloomy rooms, the house where the boy resides reminds the reader of a tomb (729). A priest died in the back drawing room, and air, mouldy from having been long enclosed, is associated with books... ...his infatuation and illusions? Chivalry has failed, both for Joyces boy and for Sammy. Their efforts seem wasted, for their gallant gestures go unseen. However, Sammys story leaves the reader hopeful. His fate has not yet bee n decided. Sammy loses his job only if gains the title of unsuspected hero (737). He claims his right to be an individual in a puritanical, conservative, and uncompromising culture. In Joyces Araby and Updikes A & P, two boys replace their ideas of heroism with modern-life realism and inch their way closer to manhood.Works CitedJoyce, James. Araby. Making Literature consider An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Eds. John Clifford and John Schilb. Boston Bedford, 1999. 728-32.Updike, John. A & P. Making Literature Matter An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Eds. John Clifford and John Schilb. Boston Bedford, 1999. 733-37.