Essay on Male Chauvinism in John Updike and Ernest Hemingway

This story could make one wonder, how far would you go to get the person of your dreams. Three young ladies walk into the A&P store wearing nothing but bathing suits. The girls catch the attention of Sammy who is the cashier. Sammy watches the girls walk around the store while making mental notes about each one of the girls. When Mr. Lengel the store manager sees the girls, he lets them know that the store policy is to have your shoulders covered and to dress appropriately when you enter the store. This conversation upsets Sammy, so in the moment Sammy spontaneously quits his job in hopes of being the girl’s hero. After Sammy takes off his apron and walks out the door he looks around, but the girls have already gone. Within John Updike’s short story “A&P” the author uses foreshadowing, a dynamic character, and symbolism to show us how life can be unpredictable at times.

John Updike's story "A&P" talks about a 19-year old lad, Sammy, who has a job at the local grocery store, the A&P. Sammy works at the register in the store and is always observing the people who walk in and out each day. On this particular day that the story takes place, Sammy is caught off guard when a cluster of girls walk into the store wearing just their bathing suits. This caught Sammy's attention because the nearest beach is five miles away and he could not figure out why they would still be in their suits. Sammy continues to overlook the girls in the store throughout their endeavor to pick up some item's that they were sent in for. While they are wandering around the store Sammy watches the reactions of other customers, is yelled at

The short story “A&P” written by John Updike, is about three girls who change Sammy’s life. The three girls came from the beach and are not dressed properly to enter a grocery store called A&P. Sammy, the main character, is a check out clerk, and observes every detail about the girls. Sam even gives each of the girls a name. His favorite is “Queenie.” Sammy is obviously the type of guy who doesn’t get a lot of girls. Sam has a conflict of person vs. society. Because of his dead end job, obsession with Queenie, and his noble act to save the girls from embarrassment, Sammy has a conflict between himself and society.

A&P is described to be, “...five miles from a beach...but we’re right in the middle of town...north of Boston…” (Updike 19). Sammy’s description of the A&P present the setting as an ugly and boring place to be in. The fluorescent light is as cool as the “checkerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor”(Updike 19). The everyday grocery shoppers move in the same direction except for the girls in the swim suits, for they move against everyone else, and everything is organized into perfection along the tidy aisles. This degrading routine in this establishment is implied by Sammy’s careless reference to the usual shoppers as “sheep,” “houseslaves,” and “pigs” (Updike 18). These frequent customers seem to walk the store in oblivion to everything else around them; as Sammy points out, “I bet you could set off dynamite in an A&P and the people would by and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists…” (Updike 18).

      A more likely explanation for Sammy's abrupt resignation from his job is his complete boredom with it. This dissatisfaction with his work situation is plainly seen in his regard for a group that Sammy holds in even more contempt than the girls: the regular, paying customers. His references to them as "sheep," "houseslaves" and "pigs" reveals his attitude toward the group that keeps his employer in business--and Sammy in a job that he hates. His diatribe in the story's beginning directed at the "witch" who points out to him that he rang up the same purchase twice shows the unreasonable nature of this contempt for the customers: the mistake was quite clearly Sammy's fault, yet he lashes out at a customer who simply did what any

In “A&P”, John Updike uses compelling diction, language, and description to enhance the perspective of Sammy within the story and his final decision to quit his job. The use of imagery within the supermarket develops the environment Sammy worked in to a greater extent and painted diverse pictures of the customers. The derogatory descriptions of Lengel and some customers was also significant in terms of revealing Sammy’s emotions about his job at A&P. The nature of the situation with the girls and descriptive language of the customers and environment were also significant factors.A spontaneous effort to portray Sammy’s power and independence was a significant aspect Updike made more interesting by implementing dialogue, diction, and theme.

Sammy is shallow and sexist in the way he has named these young women according to his first impression of their bodies and behaviors. Patrick W. Shaw notes that "Sammy knows what is on each aisle in the store and constantly thinks of what is inside bottles, cans, and jars; but he has no idea what is inside the girls, no sensitivity to their psychology or sexual subtlety. His awareness stops with their sweet cans and ice-cream breasts" (322). Sammy further demonstrates his childishness and chauvinism by commenting on the mental abilities of the girls: "You never know for sure how girls' minds work (do you really think it's a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?)" (27).

In the story A&P by John Updike a young cashier by the name of Sammy learns about the power of desire and the mystery of others minds when working at an A&P supermarket in a small town north of Boston in the 1960’s, where there was a lot of social norms and many people didn’t step out of them. The young nineteen-year-old Sammy wasn’t expecting his Thursday shift at A&P to go the way it did when income three young girls but, these are not your socially normal teenagers who come walking in the door. The moment these girls walk into the A&P they attract every male eye in the store towards them, which clearly shows the kind of power their sexuality grants them over their opposite sex. In turn, Sammy imagination and interpretation of these

In the short story A&P by John Updike, the story is told in a first person narrative of a teenage boy working as a cashier in an A&P grocery store on a hot summer day. The story begins with the teenage boy named Sammy becoming preoccupied by a group of three teenage girls that walk into the grocery store wearing bathing suits. Sammy admires the girl's beauty as most nineteen year old adolescent boys would, in a slightly lewd and immature nature. His grammar is flawed and he is clearly not of an upper-class family, his

Throughout the short story A&P, written by John Updike, the reader is given the challenge of determining the ages of the three girls that enter the supermarket who are barely dressed, wearing nothing but a swimsuit. One of the store workers, Sammy, shows interest in these girls and strives to be their “hero”. The ultimate question that is never answered in the story is: Are the girls just young and plain naive? Or are they older and aware of what they are doing? Using the symbols Updike has given throughout the story, I expect the girls to be young and naive. By his use of symbolism, Updike suggests that the line between youth versus adulthood is the main source of tension throughout his story.

Hemingway’s works for almost a century have been deemed sexist under the scrutinizing eyes of some readers. They stake their claims around examples such as: shorter scene length and tension in dialogue with women compared to more generous length and easier-going conversations with men, protagonist comfort level between men versus women, and sentence flow when women are involved. Critics rebuke said statements by saying although there are definitely sections of text that contain these accusations, there are other examples that show equality between men and women. Hemingway was not gender biased, but his life experiences and personality greatly affected his works, which makes sense due to his personal lack of connection and uneasiness with women (Torma).

Also, Hemingway was considered to be “vitally concerned with re-establishing what he felt were the proper rules of man and women in their relationship to each other” (Fiedler, 305). This is shown in his portrayal of women in

The following will present the themes of 'masculinity ' in relation to style in Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway. Both are major figures of 20th century US fiction, and both write about characters that struggle with male or masculine identity and social expectations. These struggles often mean that other characters in their stories are the victims. In other words, the problems that the characters experience, are both 'internalized ' but also 'externalized ' toward others and this will be examined with specific author selections. It will be argued in the following that there is a minimalism recognized at many levels of the style for both authors, but this essay will explore the 'minimal

Ernest Hemingway’s classic historical fiction novel The Sun Also Rises comprises an eventful timeline: bullfighting, fishing trips, male friendship, disguised alcoholism, and the differences between femininity and masculinity and how they overlap. . His 1926 novel about members of an expatriate friend group and one pivotal fiesta in Spain portrays a story rife with unrequited love, symbolism, and metaphors for the Lost Generation in Europe. However, the way Hemingway focuses on masculinity and femininity interplaying with each other and contrasts the effects of the two on all characters and story stands out to the audience.

In Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Lady Brett Ashley is accompanied by a group of exclusively male characters that drive the novel towards numerous international adventures of binge drinking and partying. Amid their fervent celebrations, most of the characters cope with their various insecurities, though Brett puts up a facade of confidence for the majority of the novel. An interesting point to bring up is that 20th century women carried the symbolically feminine responsibility of bearing children, and Brett, who is at her prime in terms of pregnancy, has no children and has seemingly no intention of having any. When one takes into account Brett’s general promiscuity, the absence of children suggests that Brett, despite her outwardly care-free attitudes, may be incapable of having children, causing her to lose confidence in her potential feminine personality. Coincidentally, Brett’s appearance and spontaneous actions often reflect those of a stereotypical man, which is a sign that she has given up on feeling effeminate and resorted to identifying with men by taking on a masculine persona. Brett’s masculinity therefore serves as a vehicle to show that when a person is unhappy or insecure with themselves, that person seeks to compensate for it in other ways, whether they have control over their situation or not.