Symbolism In The Bazaar By John Barnishel

more than an allusion. He realizes this when he encounters a shopping girl with two men flirting at her side and counting money at the Bazaar and he immediately recognizes the situation and realizes that Mangan's sister is not the picture of Virgin Mary, she is just like the shopping girl in the Bazaar, “engaging in idle conversation,” said Barnishel (Barnhisel, n.p.). It is at this moment where he realizes that he should have never “joined his religious fervor with his romantic passion for Mangan's sister” (Barnishel,n.p.). The last line of the story reveals that the narrator has completely lost his innocence as he realizes that his church and society lied to him about the world: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish
Overall in the end of the story the symbols, setting, and tone converge to relate the story of a boy who lost his innocence to the darkness of the world, thus strongly establishing the theme of lost innocence.
John Updike’s “A&P” is almost a return voyage to James Joyce’s famous “Araby’ with its many similarities it is almost as if it were its reflection, except his quest for Queenie revolves around a mythological symbol. The story opens when three barefoot girls in bathing suits enter the store and catch the eye of Sammy, a worker at the store, who is particularly interested in the leader of the group who he calls “Queenie” (Updike, n.p.). Literature Critic Harriet Blodgett claims that the girls acted “as temptresses who lead Sammy astray” and in a way convey a feeling of the legendary sirens, who lead males unknowingly to their destruction (Blodgett ,n.p.). The girls bathing suits,