Plot John Updike Essay

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Tori Davis
English Composition II
Rafalowski
3 March 2015

Just Another Gigolo In “A&P”, Updike shows the internal conflict between Sammy’s perspective on what is more important to himself, throwing away his life responsibilities or his raging adolescent hormones interacting with the real world. Most stories start with an essential list of ingredients. In “A&P” John Updike, stirs up the recipe and adds in a little hot sauce. Since Updike does not start off like the usual writing pattern, it shows how Sammy truly is immature and randy throughout the entire short story. Updike’s writing pattern is very significant, because it reiterate points throughout the story on why the reader can infer Sammy is unripe. Thus, “A&P” does not start off with the character’s name and description, A&P begins with three girls walking into the local grocery store in just bathing suits. This catapults everything into action. The main character, which is also the narrator, is a nineteen year old, hormonal boy who lives at home with his parents. He does not iron or fold his clothes. Sammy is a cashier at a local grocery store, he would not even have the job if it were not for mommy and daddy. Throughout the story, Sammy is faced with his raging hormones that put him in an iffy situation. The problem of his thinking with the wrong head is that it forces him to quit his job for a misconstrue relationship. The beginning of the short story, it does not start off with “Hi, my name is Sammy and I work at the local A&P store. Also, I live with my parents, and you will soon know that I will think with the wrong head.” Since it does not start off like most stories, the exposition and rising action go hand and hand. By Updike doing so, it makes the story more interesting by adding in more details as the story progresses. The story is told through a nineteen year old, irresponsible boy who works at a local grocery store called A&P. The reader can gather that Sammy is a very typical, immature adolescent by his thoughts and actions throughout. The story starts off by saying, “In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits” (Updike 148). This shows the reader that Sammy is very typical, because the first thing that he recognizes is the girls’ attire. Then he rambles on while analyzing the girls’ physical appearance by stating, “The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top back of her legs” (Updike 148). Not even a paragraph in and Sammy is exploring every inch of “the chunky kid” even underneath her the bottom of her two piece bathing suit, which most people would not look into detail at unless they are still young. Sammy’s focus is on the girls which show that his mind is not fully developed, because he cannot figure which is more important. Even though the girls are walking in at the very beginning of the story, it is considered the inciting incident. When the girls’ clothes start getting noticed, it catapults the story into action. This is where you figure out a lot about Sammy and what kind of character he is. “She had on a kind of dirty pink-beige maybe, I don’t know- bathing suit with a little nubble all over it and, what got me, the straps were down. They were off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms, and I guess as a result the suit had slipped a little on her, so all around the top of the cloth there was this shining rim” (Updike 149). Sammy describes everything about the girls from the colors of their bathing suits to long necks, prima-donna legs, and diversity of their weight. This shows that Sammy literally cannot even function as a cashier, because he cannot get over the little clique of girls. While he is classifying each one, it backs up that he is a normal, hormonal teenager, because he literally labels each part
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