"A Little Cloud" by James Joyce is a story with little happiness. It follows the main character, Chandler, through a night during which he is presented with the reality of his worst fear, which is that he will never amount to more than what he already is. He feels trapped by his circumst...

John Updike's A & P and James Joyce's Araby share many of the same literary traits. The primary focus of the two stories revolves around a young man who is compelled to decipher the different between cruel reality and the fantasies of romance that play in his head. That the man does, indeed, discove...