LITERATURE ANALYSIS 2
Compare and contrast “Araby” and “A&P”
In the texts, “Araby” by James Joyce and “A&P” by John Updike expose some of the
situations that teenagers face when they are graduating from childhood into young adults. In
"A&P," there is Sammy, a young man who works in a grocery. He decides to resign from the
store after the managers expel three girls who enter into the store with swimming costumes.
Sammy quits because he wanted to impress the girls. In "Araby," the narrator is shy, and he faces
various obstacles while intending to fall in love with Mangan's sister. In both texts, the characters
suffer from self-esteem. Sammy does not dare to approach the girls and reveal his intentions, but
he uses the pretext of resigning with the belief that this would impress the ladies. On the hand,
the narrator, in "Araby" wants to bring a gift to Mangan's sister as a way of wooing her; although
this is romantic, he is yet to communicate his intentions.
Although Sammy and the narrator in “Araby” are timid, the former manages to overcome
and use it as a philosophy of life. When Sammy realizes that he cannot manage to be in a
relationship with Queenie, because of social status differences, he develops a new perception of
life. Stearns, Sandlin, and Burdick (2011) reveal that because of the social status of the three
girls, they dare to ignore fundamental societal principles such dressing decently. Considerably,
Sammy has undergone some awakening, and this depicts him as a round character. However, in
the case of the narrator in "Araby," the young man does not transform. When the uncle and
parents fail to provide guidance on how to manage relationships, he does not fight on his own
(Ko, 2013). What is shown is a case of a flat character who remains the same throughout the
story.
