Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
¶ … Ignorance Bliss? A Comparison and Contrast of the Characters and Themes of Sandra Cisneros' "The House on Mango Street" and "Araby" by James Joyce
Plot Summary
Character Summary
Ignorance, although comfortable is not bliss at all.
Character
Gender
Age Difference
Culture
Catholicism and sexuality in Joyce
Catholicism and family in Cisneros
Home
Significance of home in Cisneros
Significance of leaving home in Joyce
Both the protagonists of Sandra Cisneros and "Araby" by James Joyce are young adolescents, poised upon the brink of realizing that older people do not have all of the answer in life. The tales detail the coming of age of the young protagonists, as they realize that the adults in their respective worlds are not as good or wise as they seem to be. Cisneros's female heroine comes to her realization when she is contrasting the promises of her family about the house on Mango Street her mother and father purchase, and the white picket fences of the houses she sees on the television screen. Joyce's hero experiences a sexual betrayal when an older woman the young man admires asks him to bring her something from the fair at Araby. At Araby, he loses his idealized image of her as well as his money. The two young characters emerge sadder but wiser from their tales, and both authors suggest that although ignorance can seem blissful, ignorance is a state of mind one must abandon to become an adult in an often deceitful world.
However, the processes by which the two main characters come to their central realizations about the corrupted nature of adult life are profoundly different because...
"Araby" begins with a very idealized vision of a young woman in the eyes of the male narrator. When he loses his money while trying to find her a gift at a cheap street fair, he begins to unfairly regard the woman as cheap and worthless. In contrast, the tale of "The House on Mango Street" begins not with a person, but with a characterization of the young woman in the context of her family of six, including Mama, Papa, brothers Carlos and Kiki, sister Nenny. The young woman is not free to wander in the lights and delights of the fair, like Joyce's young man. Sonia Saldivar-Hull in her text, Feminism on the Border: Chicana Gender Politics and Literature has noted that protectiveness rather than exploration has been the primary, foundational experience of many Latina women. (Saldivar-Hull, 2000) However, Cisneros' narrator, no matter how sheltered she may be from the world at the beginning of the tale as a young woman, is still forced to realize from an economic perspective that older people are not always good and wise, as the promises of her father and mother do not match the reality of the peeling paint of the house they move into, the first house the family has ever owned.
Both short stories are marked by a distinct sense of place and culture, that heightens the nature of the character's sense of seeing adults 'fall from grace.' Both protagonists are Catholics. Joyce does characterize Ireland quite strikingly over the course of his short story, stressing the presence of priests and also the presence of the British at the Araby fair. (Barnhisel, 1997) Home as a place and the significance of objects in Cisneros's world are even more important to her female narrator -- until the end of the story, she sees them as part of her identity,…
Works Cited
Barnhisel, Grey. "An Overview of Araby" From Short Stories for Students. New York: Gale research 1997
Cisneros, Sandra. "The House on Mango Street." From The House on Mango Street. Los Angeles: Arte Publico Press, 1984.
Joyce, James. "Araby." From Dubliners. London: Bloomsbury, 1919.
Saldivar-Hull, Sonia. Feminism on the Border: Chicana Gender Politics and Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
I couldn't have imagined their lives even if I had tried. (Broyard, p.42). When she reveals this, Broyard demonstrates an attitude that is probably shared by many white people; a desire to talk about race, but the concern that even broaching the topic is impolite. Therefore, the gulf between the races gets wider and wider. Broyard also acknowledges the problem with claiming her own African-American identify. Talking about her first post-funeral
Bliss oModernist literature distinguishes itself from literature that came before it by employing a number of literary devices that make the stories more personal and introspective. Katherine Mansfield's story "Bliss" is a good example of modernist literature because of her use of symbolic language, and the protagonist's impressionistic feelings regarding the events around her instead of providing direct interpretation. leading to an ambiguous ending. The reader realizes that the protagonist, Bertha,
The satisfaction derived from that is by reason of good will towards the common man and not some universal pleasure felt by all men. But what about pain? Is Mills seems to be stating that happiness is the absence of pain. But is not some pain beneficial? Our reaction to spoiled milk that prevents us from drinking it for example. Wait, perhaps there are levels of pain that need to
His enlightenment comes when he is forced to be fully self-reliant. He realizes that he cannot depend upon his father or upon anyone else for omniscient knowledge, and that he is left to his own devices and beliefs in a world without morality. Like the cave-dweller, Elie eventually realizes that the material world does not offer moral answers; rather moral answers come from his own mind, sense of fortitude,
Plato, Descartes, And the Matrix The Matrix can be compared with Plato and Descartes. While that might seem like a very odd comparison, there are many similarities. In each scenario, there is the concept of reality and how to determine what is real and what is not. While it may seem as though it is easy to tell if something is real or not real, the truth is more complicated. People
The scene is full of hope and joy, and the use of light helps to illuminate this mood. Once Laura crosses the road, the scene is described quite differently. At first it is "smoky and dark," however Laura does manage to see in some of the cottages flickers of light in the shadows. These flickers of light represent flickers of hope, but they are far less luminous than those which