Araby and Eveline

James Joyce's Araby and Eveline are similar in that both characters are looking for something. The main character in Araby wants to impress his 'true love' by picking her something out from the bazaar; however, when he gets there, it is pretty much closed, and he goes home empty-handed.

In Eveline, the main character is looking from an escape from her life; her father is abusive, her two older brothers are gone, and her mother is dead.. when she falls in love, a sort of exit-strategy comes up, but in the end, she fails to follow through with it. Her love is stranded and she stays where she is.

Both of Joyce's texts have melancholy tones; both use descriptive imagery. I found it kind of hard to read, and had to go over each story a couple of times so that I could really 'see' what was going on in the story, but after I did, I saw the images very clearly. Joyce's descriptions are both relevant to the story line and poetic. His style of writing was clear in both stories - they followed a similar track, and I liked that continuity.

Both characters fail to complete the actions they set out with. There is no follow-through in both of Joyce's stories, and that is what makes them the same.