In many stories of the modern era, love is a driving theme or story idea. Often the plot follows a similar path. At the beginning there is a distance between the two loves. So there has to be a quest for the man to get feelings for the girl of his dreams and then the story ends with a happy ending. In James Joyce's “Araby” it seems that the plot is susceptible to the average love plot. It begins with a boy, the narrator, falling in love with his friend's sister. He starts chatting with the girl and soon thinks that if he makes the trip to Araby Bazaar and brings back something to the girl, he will get her love. However, the boy has the epiphany that his search will not make the girl love him and returns home in shame. There is also a similar message in “A Dill Pickle” by Katherine Mansfield. Here a couple meets in a bar after a long time. The man thinks he can win the woman's heart, but at the end of the story she leaves the restaurant. These two authors use love as a tool to drive their plot, but at the end of the story they turn it into a lesson that love isn't what it's cracked up to be. In “Araby” by James Joyce, the main character and also the narrator live in a small Irish Christian town on North Richmond Street. While Joyce uses religion as one of his main imagery ideas, he uses love to drive the plot of the story. Joyce begins the story with a young schoolboy who falls in love with Mangan's sister. The boy believed he was so in love that “he pressed my palms together until they trembled and murmured, 'O love! Oh love'.” At this stage of the story the boy has fallen in love with what he believes is madly in love with this young girl. However, ... middle of paper ... their stories prove that love is not quite as it is imagined and times often end in sadness. In "Araby", the boy thinks that if he brings his beloved something back from the bazaar, she will fall in love with him. However, the boy has an epiphany and sees that even if he brings something back to the girl, she will not love him and returns home sad and ashamed. In "A Dill Pickle", a woman sees a man she was having an affair with. He manages to tell her how he did all the things they said they would do together and somehow the girl begins to fall in love with him again. But at the end of the story the girl sees that the man is self-centered and that she is better off alone. She leaves the restaurant alone rather than leave love. In modern times love is used as a tool to drive the plot, but in the end there is rarely a happy ending.