Refine/Refocus

In my essay I want to talk about the influences that men and women have on each other in “A&P” and “Araby”, and how the girls seem apathetic and the men seem to have very strong feelings. I also want to talk about how both of the main male characters in the stories have dull, uninteresting, or overall unappealing lives that they use the girls to escape from, or at least the idea of them. I wanted to possibly focus on the idea that in “A&P” Queenie and her followers were described as going against the normal flow of traffic in the aisles of the store and how the other people in the store were depicted as “sheep” in comparison. I also wanted to focus on the part in “Araby” when the main character in the story was described as “carrying his chalice through a throng of foes”. These show how Mangan’s sister and Queenie are symbols of the men’s desire for excitement and hope. I think that these two passages relate to one another in that they both put the women of the stories in positions of power, and it’s the power that the men wish that they had.