John Updikes A&P Essay -- John Updike A&P Essays

washbowl Updikes A&PIn a sm all(prenominal) town everything is familiar and often taken for granted. In John Updikes short story, A&P, the main character, Sammy, discovers a beauty distant anything he has ever seen in his small town before. Queenies saucer-eyed magnificence so stuns him that he quits his job in her defense. The storyteller saysAround they come, Queenie still leading the way, and holding a little gray-headed jar in her hand. Slots Three through S dismantle are unnerve and I could see her wondering between Stokes and me, but Stokesie with his usual slew draws an old party in baggy gray pants who stumbles up with four giant cans of pineapple juice (what do these bums do with all that pineapple juice Ive often asked myself) so the girls come to me. Queenie puts down the jar and I take it into my fingers icy cold. Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in thoroughgoing(a) Sour Cream 49. Now her hands are empty, non a ring or a bracelet, bare as immortal made them, and I wonder where the moneys coming from. Still with that prim feel she lifts a folded dollar bill pop of the hollow at the sum of her nubbled pink top. The jar went heavy in my hand. Really, I thought that was so cute. The narrative voice in this selection clearly demonstrates the qualities of the main character, the vote counter. through and through the diction and purport contained within the narrative voice, it is obvious that Sammy is still in his teens and has a very mature perception of women. It is first helpful to kip down that A&P is written in the first person and that the narrator is an objective narrator that is, he relies on his observations and never knows what is going on in the minds of others. Sammy is also a participant narrator because he is in the story he is telling. Because Sam... ...t. Sammy has the right to be excited by something out of the ordinary, and it is clear in is tone that he is excited. The use of a relaxed tone in a first-perso n narrative voice simplifies the language to a ground level that suggests the narrator is quite young, probably still in his teens. His job at the A&P may be his first real work experience in his small town, and it is evident that he has adopted a certain mindset about the people who come in. When three singular girls (unique among each other and unique to their environment) enter the store in cleanse suits and bare feet, Sammy is excited by the change in pace. He becomes so mentally involved with their existence without mentioning any sort of sexual attraction, that even the reader adopts an awe in Queenie and her followers. Sammy is young, but his behavior is most mature, and for certain admirable.