Strength In John Updike's A & P

In the writing of the story, A&P, John Updike gave beauty to the peculiarity of adolescence revealed in a peculiar story set in a convenience store. Updike equipped the story with a first-person narrator, dramatic irony, and an interesting setting. Those devices served to realistically portray the naive tone of a lost, soon-to-be adult.

Strength comes in many forms, We usually think of strength as a person with a powerful body. Actually, a person can have a strong mind, have patience, and the strength to resist temptation. Weakness is not always noticed at first, and it can be seen in many different ways. It can be an emotional weakness caused by loss, loneliness, and other life problems. Steinbeck makes his story, Of Mice and Men, interesting by giving his characters both strengths and weaknesses.

Updike describes his characters using personification, stating they are obedient, have flaws and manners, and change clothes. When the characters change clothes, it is because Updike makes the decision to put them into something different, the characters are obedient because the author and creator of the characters make them obedient and does not write that they are disobedient. As Updike continues creating his novel, the characters continue to grow, changing as the novel does from chapter to chapter. The novelist knows that the characters have flaws “bandages unravel,” but even though he says he loves them, he does not fix the flaws the characters have. Updike says that he

All too often we do not think about our personal strength until a situation arises that causes us to use this natural attribute that we know as strength.

Life is always about making important decisions that could change your life completely. Like the story A&P, Sammy made a huge decision to quit his job due to his boss being rude to three young girls wearing bathing suits. John Updike used several literary elements to make the story stand out and for people to relate to Sammy. The most important elements that is used in this story is setting, point of view, and characters.

Strength is that part of your intellect or nervous system that is more effective and productive than other parts. Throughout your experience of life, your actions or reactions drive different thoughts, behavior and emotion in your brain. The requests that are processed more efficiently and rapidly are known as your strengths. Nowadays, strengths-based approaches to work and life are gaining a lot of popularity and often they are used to improve leadership and create more productive and efficient work teams.

The strength and weakness for women and men was used the their advantage or disadvantage some weakness through my experience were lack of motivation, limit skills, lack of will power, substance abuse, pregnancies, financial stains, timing, and life changes altering plans. Strengths were will power, motivation, positive influences, growth developments, exposure to diversified culture, higher education, support systems. Those whom chose to self-sacrifice themselves overcome obstacles reached their goals. Those who work hard knowing one day they would see the big picture realized the success or

In short stories, sometimes the main character may grow and change into a more mature individual. While In other occasions the characters remain the same. In the short story of "A & P," by In John Updike, the dynamic protagonist is Sammy, a young teenager who has his first job working at a small grocery store in New England. Sammy is transitioning from childhood to adulthood and through his words and actions, we discovered that he does not acquire the best characteristics which include being immature, judgmental, pervert and impulsive.

A&P is a story about a 19 year old teenage boy that works at a supermarket and acts childish. In this story Sammy’s attitude is sexist and judgemental towards the customers coming in and out of the store. When the three girls walk in the store half naked with their swimsuits on, Sammy is shocked because he hasn't seen anyone wear swimsuits in public place before. The girls are in the aile’s shopping and Sammy is examining them to see how they shop and how they act, he says “ Sheep's pushing their carts down the aisle” (Updike page 17 A&P) he refers to the girls as sheep’s.

The story, A&P by John Updike, begins with the narrator, Sammy, checking out groceries when he notices three pretty girls stroll into the supermarket, dressed in nothing but skimpy bathing suits. As the pretty girls cruise the aisles, they are gawked at with varying levels of disapproval and lewdness. Sammy, on the other hand is intrigued by their confidence. He is especially intrigued by the girl he concludes to be the leader of the pack, whom he nicknames to be Queenie. Eventually, after strolling the aisles of the store, the girls finally make their way to Sammy’s cash register.

A typical day for a grocery store cashier consists of scanning items, bagging items, and dealing with snobby customers every once in a while. So it is no wonder that Sammy, the grocery store cashier, has a sudden mood change that exhibits his personality when his day deviates from the normal. In the first two paragraphs of the narrative “A&P” by John Updike, Updike uses word choice, tone of voice, and detail to show that the narrator, Sammy, has a lot of good/bad qualities, like straightforwardness, wittiness, perceptiveness, and eloquence. Depending on the situation in which these traits are revealed, Sammy can either be perceived as an innocent teenager or a chauvinist in the making.

Through the use of literary devices such as symbol, setting, and imagery John Updike tells the story of the narrator and antagonist Sammy, a lowly nineteen-year-old cashier at a local grocery store north of Boston in his short story “A & P”. During what seems like an average day in the otherwise insular town, three girls close to Sammy’s age enter the A & P, all of which probably would not have caused such a ruckus had it not been for the fact that every one of them were clad in bathing suits, each more revealing than the next. Sammy is a dynamic character because he undergoes changes throughout the course of the story, making it somewhat of a coming of age tale. Later in the story, the scantily dressed girls cause a major confrontation between

On the surface, the hero of John Updike's much-anthologized short story "A&P" does not seem like a hero on the level of an Odysseus or a Hercules. Sammy is a cashier at a local grocery store. However, when three girls wearing bathing suits enter the A&P, Sammy begins to experience a call to action. For the first time in his life, he takes a stand when he feels as if the pretty girls are being treated with a lack of respect. Sammy feels the first stirrings of rebellion within him, as he chafes against the constraints of his life. Campbell divides the three parts of the hero's quest into a circular journey of departure, initiation, and return. Over the course of "A&P" Sammy makes his 'departure' into the world of the hero.

John Updike is viewed by his readers as a progressive voice in his work that promotes feminist issues. He makes these issues stand out more evidently, rather than hidden, in order for the reader to realize how women are viewed in society. From reading Updike’s A&P, the story sends the message to readers of genders working together to strive for equality. If readers do not carefully and actively read A&P they may miss key messages about the power men hold over women, not just in society but in literature as well. Even though Updike’s A&P seems to be a story about a teenager finally standing up to his boss and quitting the job he hates, the tone used reveals the hidden message on how women are in a male-oriented world. The relationship between both men are women are shown as unequals, men on the top and women always below them, Updike makes sure to open up the reader 's eyes in realizing the way females are being treated unfairly.

There are many ways to analyze a literary work. These ways are called Schools of Criticism or Critical Theories. Schools of criticism occur when groups of readers and critics come together and declare allegiance to a similar core of beliefs. And, when they do, they ask a particular set of question about a literary work. Each different way of analyzing a literary work elicits a different set of questions.