Comparing and Contrasting
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, and James Joyce’s “Araby” are both centralized short stories that couldn’t be anymore different in their context. Each story takes place in a very different time period, along with different plots, settings, and styles of writing. At first glance, the reader would not notice the similarities that are buried deep within these two stories. But with further analyst, these stories actually have very distinct thematic similarities that in part make them very much alike.
Firstly, Each of the main characters seemed to want something that never quite actually took place. For example, in "The Story of an Hour," Mrs. Mallard wants to be free of her husband. When she was told that he had…show more content… So the boy persuades his uncle to give him money to go, and he ends up getting to the Bazaar, too late. He realized she was tricking him into getting her stuff at the end when he thinks, "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger. Even though the settings of both these stories are very different, the basic idea is the same: With every step we take, there is another one we could have taken in the end.
Secondly, I realized all of the protagonists develop into more confident and independent individuals. In “Araby” a boy develops a crush on a girl, which turns very obsessive. They have a conversation about how she would relish going to the bazaar Araby but can’t, and how if he goes he will get something for her. He is so exhilarated it becomes all he can contemplate. He builds up the bazaar to be an astonishing affair, and if he can get her a gift, something will transpire between them. When the night comes, it does not go as planned because his uncle peregrinates home hours after he says he will and the boy is alone on the train ride there. When he gets to the bazaar, it is only half-lit and only a few stalls are still open. The boy is very frustrated, expressing, “Remembering with arduousness why I had come, I went over to one of the stalls and examined porcelain cases and flowered tea-sets,” and doesn’t recollect the reason for coming or why…show more content… In "Araby", the boy's purpose is to get a girl to like him to. He is so consumed with love that he does not realize the girl does not actually like him, but just using him to buy her stuff. This unusual way of looking at love carries on to "Story of an Hour", in which Mrs. Mallard discovers her husband is dead. She first reacts with grief and sadness, but then she becomes joyful. In the end, it is unclear whether or not she is happy when she dies of a heart attack after seeing her husband alive. Death is used as a symbol of freedom for her, and the love she felt was largely mixed with feelings of hate, “Joy that kills”. Throughout each story, the main character suffers an earnest let down after deluding themselves