Stories of Ourselves Volume 3: Araby and Atrophy

Worked guidance

1. Thesis: both passages make access fail through time and ordinary speech, but the resulting judgements turn in different directions. Araby closes with the narrator's judgement of himself. Atrophy follows Nora's reading of another woman's control. A shared theme of disappointment becomes analytically useful only when the difference in narrative access is retained.
2. Evidence comparison: Araby delays the boy through his uncle's forgetfulness and the slowly moving train, then gives him nearly closed stalls and a duty-like sales question. Atrophy lets Jane interrupt the declaration and promise a message later, while the watch and train turn departure into apparent consideration. Coins and a timetable materialise constraints, but the encounters are not interchangeable: commercial indifference is not automatically deliberate personal gatekeeping.
3. Counterinterpretation: the bazaar's practical limitations can genuinely defeat the boy's purpose, so calling the end self-recognition should not make his disappointment entirely self-created. Conversely, a forceful judgement about vanity does not narrate lasting maturity. In Atrophy the dismissal demonstrably prevents access, but Nora's belief that Jane knows everything remains attributed thought. The passage confirms Christopher's consciousness, not his later death or Jane's private confession.
4. Model paragraph: Both passages turn an ordinary enquiry into an exposure of unequal needs. In Araby, the shop assistant's question seems motivated by duty rather than interest, while counting money and closing stalls reduce the boy's eagerly anticipated destination to a transaction he does not complete. In Atrophy, Jane's courtesies are more actively consequential: she supplies an innocuous completion to Nora's broken declaration, postpones the message and invokes a train that must not be missed. The contrast prevents us from labelling both women identical agents of cruelty. The boy's final anger turns toward his own vanity; Nora's thoughts turn toward Jane's presumed knowledge. Each response has explanatory force, but neither is independent proof of every motive involved. The boy buys no gift in this passage, and Nora reaches no bedside. Their blocked actions are certain in a way their comprehensive interpretations of themselves or others are not.
5. Reasoned conclusion: external constraints and inward interpretation combine in both endings, but commercial disappointment and intimate exclusion produce distinct kinds of knowledge claim. A qualified reading recognises the setbacks without granting either focal figure complete authority. Neither passage narrates a subsequent reconciliation or proves that the insight it stages remains unchanged for life.

Self-marking points

Examiner tip

Six indicative points, two per part; not an official Cambridge allocation. Credit evidence-supported alternatives and a connected comparative argument. AO5 is not an AS requirement; testing a reading here develops interpretation under AO3. Independent teacher approval pending.