Growing Up in Araby by James Joyce and Boys and Girls by Alice Munro
In the stories “Araby” by James Joyce, and “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, there is a common theme of growing up. In both of these stories the characters came to a realization of who they were and what they wanted to be. They both are of the age when reality strikes and priorities take on meaning. The characters in both stories evolve through rites of passage but the way in which these revolutions occur differ with each character.
These stories can be seen as different from each other in many ways. The young boy lives in a house in a suburban area without a mother or a father, but with guardians. He has a group of friends nearby he hangs out with. Though, he has no
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Both kids seem lonely and in their own realm. They are both going through a time in their life where they are changing. Each character, in his or her own way, came to a realization. The boy in “Araby”, found the “finer” things in life. He no longer will be a little kid playing ball in the street, like his friends. He now frowns upon them for being such “children”. I think his revolution came when he went to Araby to buy a gift. He was so distraught by being late and having to wait upon somebody else that, he now wants to be his own man. He wants to be in charge of his own self, without having to wait around for permission from other people, especially when their not even his parents.
The young girl in “Boys and Girls” by Munro, follows her father around and does the job of a “boy”. She was learning to shoot a gun, gave the foxes water, raked the grass after her father cut it and made a canopy for the foxes with it, and anything else her father told her to do. She thought the work in the house by her mother was “ endless, dreary and peculiarly depressing.” Yet, “Work done out of doors, and in my father’s service, was ritualistically important.” Whenever her mother gave her “female” jobs to do indoors, she would “ run out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before (her) mother thought of what she wanted her to do next.” She loathed the womanly work done inside. She did
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.
Dreams are something all humans share in common and they manifest the realization of our lives. They have a great influence over our essence and can provide colossal amounts of courage and strength to accomplish our greatest desires. However, when we do not have dreams to fight for our lives become meaningless and sorrowful, nevertheless this is the situation many people face throughout their lives. Broken dreams have become a popular theme among writers because a connection can be made with the theme and because there one’s truth can be faced. Whether dreams are forgotten or unaccomplished, there is a theory by philosopher Carl Jung that states, “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on
Coming-of-age is a chapter that every individual must inevitably trek through in order to grow and mature into one’s own self. In John Updike’s A&P and James Joyce’s Araby, the theme of growth permeates throughout both narratives as their respective protagonists fabricate an ideal world from their own naive perspectives, only to shed their ignorant fantasies about how they believe to understand that the world can bend to their decisions to truly understand the cruelty behind world they live in: reaching maturity through the loss of innocence. Dismissing the pragmatic aspects of life can lead to the downfall of a person’s ideals as they eventually come to the realization that their dreams are impractical, and even impossible to bring to
The unnamed protagonist in “Araby” is just an average adolescent boy. His schedule never changes; week to week it is always the same. Each week he helps his Aunt shop for groceries and for fun he plays outside with other boys his age. There is nothing special about his family either. He lives with his aunt and uncle in an average house, in a normal town. Like most kids, his best friend is his neighbor, Mangan. His uncle is a business man and seems to follow the same routine every day. The only thing that makes the boy excited each day is the thought of Mangan’s sister. He would time his mornings around her and make sure that when she left her house, he left his. He would follow behind her down the street until he had the chance to quickly walk by her. He has only spoken to her a couple times, but the thought of her drives him
Coming-of-age stories are an important subset of English literature. Araby and The Ball Poem are both examples of such pieces. They both depict disappointment or loss in the main characters’ lives, as well as the recognition that a replacement is something less than the original. In addition to this, they show the characters’ thoughts changing in tone after a moment of significance in the plot. Araby in particular shows a change in the main character due to it being a short story rather than a poem, and having more time to develop the characterization.
Expectations and reality consistently oppose one another for numerous situations in one’s lifetime. Humans tend to desire something and act to obtain it. Although, what is expected may not always occur thus the result is mostly disappointment but, a lesson is usually learnt. This is explicitly presented in the short story “Araby”, by James Joyce, which is a short story released in 1914 as a collection comprised of 15 stories named Dubliners. Through the first-person point of view of a boy, the story emphasizes a prime example of how reality does not agree with expectations. This unnamed boy transitions from a playful individual to a person in love with the sister of his closest friend.
Araby is about a young boy that is in love with his friend’s sister and is trying to figure out how to deal with these emotions. Some elements that indicate that the main characters are coming to age are in Boys and Girls where her and her brother Laird no longer needed to sing to each other to help each other with being afraid of the dark and where she watched one horse get shot changed how she felt about killing animals so she let Flora go free when they were chasing her. In Araby, where the young boy is in love with a girl and is trying to figure out these new hormones and
“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, like many writers, used his literary works as tools to broadcast different ideas, themes, and messages that mirrored his life and beliefs. “Araby” presents a theme that depicts a loss of innocence
The combination of character development, allusions and imagery is used to convey this message to the reader.mm Throughout the story “Araby”, the narrator and protagonist of the story are shown to change from an innocent young boy to a boy with more insight. In the beginning of the story, the narrator describes a book he is fond of stating “because its leaves were yellow” (Joyce 21). The narrator was not using any figure of speech, but instead expresses his young frivolous mind. However, as the story continues he experiences love for his friend’s sister (referred to as Mangan’s sister). He watches her from afar and admires her beauty.
Everyone makes the befuddling change from childhood into adolescence. Some people remember making this change more clearly than others, but every person makes the journey. Most can still conjure up at least some reminiscences of the confusing emotions and thoughts that are engendered during this period in life. James Joyce clearly depicts a child’s transformation from childhood into adolescence through the nameless narrator in his short story Araby. Joyce uses imagery to emphasize the themes of loneliness and escape in the story.
Beyond sharing the same author, the unnamed protagonist in “Araby”, who’ll hence be referred to as the young boy, shares similarities with the protagonist in “The Dead”, Gabriel. Initially, both characters are seen as male figures who adhere to the social etiquette of their economic class, and both are conflicted by their female interests. The young boy’s sole desire in “Araby” is to win the affection of a young lady, known only as Mangan’s sister. Similarly, after Gabriel and his wife, Gretta, attend an annual dinner party, Gabriel is overcome with an incessant desire to be intimate with Gretta. Both of their efforts to submit the woman to their desires inevitably fail due to both protagonists having a perceived understanding
A short story Araby written by the famous Irish writer and poet James Joyce represents an interesting psychological story told by a young boy. Unfortunately, the author did not give the name to his narrator. This story is included in the volume of short stories which is called Dubliners and where the author shows the society he lives in. The major idea of the short story Araby is representation of maturity of a young boy, his first love experience, his feelings and emotions. A young boy who cannot understand his real feelings pretends to be mature but fails to realize his desires A young boy represented in the story is a kind, shy and very sensitive person but he has rather weak character. He fell in love with some girl who was a sister of his friend Mangan.
James Joyce’s short story “Araby” has an emotional story that is about a nameless young boy having a crush on Mangan’s sister, and how he goes on a quest to make her notice him but to come to the realization that these actions are childish and immature. Joyce introduces where the boy lives, and his thoughts, and how he feels about the area that he his living in. Joyce also shows how the boy only see the darkness, and feels disgust for his simple life, but that changes when he sees Mangan’s sister and how his day is lighten up. His actions will lead him far away from his person goals.
In the story of Araby the narrator is a young boy at school going age who is too quick to please a girl same as his age. He is to descriptive of his surrounding. He is well aware of the society norms and ideas but he has a illusion about those ideas and we could see him transform in the story towards the realization that what a real adult life is.