The key point of “Araby”, and “A&P” is a man’s state of mind when they he is in love. Both men are living in a fantasy world that cause them to act without thinking and distorts their reality. In the end, though, they both have events occur that causes them to come to grips with the reality of their unrequited love. Both these stories show that love is a powerful thing and it can often distort our views of reality. In the two stories, the protagonists experience diverse types of love evolve into deep revelations about themselves.
“Araby’s” theme is that of is love that is innocent. The protagonist of the story is a young boy who is in love with a girl that lives in his building. The boy shows his love to the girl by waiting for her every day and fantasizing about her. ‘Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlor watching her door… When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye…”. This passage is a great example of being in love for the first time because this is often the first time a young person experiences a loss of control. His feeling are what they are and he acts on how his feelings tell him to act. This kind of love causes him to act from his heart and not his head. The boy also has cannot controls his thoughts about her and he fantasizes about her. Still there is something that stops him from letting the girl know he loves her. Instead he lurks in the shadows waiting for her, watches her through his blinds, and he shakes when he has thoughts of her.
The story ‘A&P’ relates to “Araby” because when the boy sees the young girl she sparks his interest. Later on in the story, when the manager tells the girls not to come back to the store wearing only their bathing suits, Sammy defends them to his boss, and goes as far as quitting his job to defend them. Like boy in the “Araby”, A&P’s Sammy also fell deeply heartbroken.
In both stories the main characters experience intense feelings of love and turmoil with themselves. The point of both stories is that love can result in happiness or it can a person apart if they lost control of their own emotions.
