Araby John Updike Analysis

Love is... Love is one of the basic instincts to which all of the human race is affected. In James Joyce's “Araby” and John Updike's “A & P” show different ways that the protagonists are affected but these acts are unrecognized by the recipients of their love. The authors manage to apply a tone, style and language that eases the reader’s thoughts into the same familiar situation of a crush. Joyce and Updike work with this familiar feeling and have the protagonists struggling over their actions. In “Araby” the protagonist travels to the bazaar wanting to impress his love, Mangan’s sister who wishes to visit, although “she c [an] not go...” (9). If Mangan’s sister had not mentioned the bazaar the trip would never have happened. The narrator arrives at the bazaar to search a trinket for his love, he stops looking for a “sixpenny entrance” as he fears the bazaar will be closing (25). This is a fruitless endeavor
Built on fantasy and passion, often crushes are not apparent to the other party. In “Araby” the narrator is never given a name not even his love interest has a name. The narrator sees her 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). Invisible to the world, these details are only noticed by him. There is one sentence that is spoken between them and the others recollected by him. It is confusing to tell whether it is in his mind or this happens. When played out in our imaginations our crushes seem real. While Sammy in “A & P” gives details of his feelings towards Queenie that consider 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 concern of her entering the store with just a bikini