A And P Group Work
Full Text: http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike/
Biography
- 1932-2009
- Wrote for The New Yorker beginning in 1954
- Most famous for the "Rabbit" series and The Witches of Eastwick
- Also wrote criticism and reviews for the New York Review of Books
- Often wrote about Protestant, middle class, suburban life
- A&P is one of his early works, clearly influenced by JD Salinger and James Joyce's Araby
- As a critic, Updike was one of the very first to introduce Borges to an American audience
- More recently also a fan of Michel Houellbecq and a few of my favorite French writers
- Feminists often consider his writing a bit misogynistic
- ...and homophobic... http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2011/10/12/john_updike_homophobia_alan_hollinghurst.html
- Personally, like Susan Sontag, I like his criticism more than fiction
About
- Based on James Joyce's short story Araby
- How would you characterize Sammy's way of telling the story?
- Is he reliable?
- Does Sammy envy Queenie?
- Does Updike try to get you to pity Sammy at the end?
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"hard" because Sammy is stuck in the cycle
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Sammy headed to be like Stoksie who will be like their boss..likes him as a person however
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Analyzing himself finally at the end
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Queenie=power
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Queenie is the unattainable alluring life for Sammy
- Sammy views the girls in a misogynistic way, visually chopping them up into pieces like meat.
- Sammy is the one who desires something more than the life society would expect him to live.
- The three girls make him realize that there is more in life and he cannot go back to living without always wanting something more.
- Stokesie represents maturity and the life Sammy is expected to live. He has a wife and 2 kids. He is what Sammy is supposed to become in the future but Sammy doesn’t want that life.
- Queenie represents power. She preys on male attention. Queenie represents the unattainable life Sammy wishes he could live, and attempts to achieve at the end of the story.
- Flashes of color to black and white world (“dirty pink bathing suit” “oaky hair”)
- Manager attempts to maintain store policy. Represents the way society sees certain aspects of life and wants them to be a certain way.
- From a gender perspective, close reading this story would lead someone to believe this story is, in part, about the rights and abilities of women
- The male gaze in this story is very dismissive of female power/sexuality/identity...
- Sammy applies aspirational qualities to Queenie and her friends that young males often do to young women
- One of the most notable features of this story is the vivid portrayal of Sammy through the use of his first person narration of the story. Since the story is told through Sammy’s eyes, readers are able to grasp Sammy’s personality clearly. For instance, it is clear that Sammy is not content in his job at the A&P, based on his distaste for the customers:
“Looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through” (Updike 19).
- Here, by referring to the customers as “sheep,” Sammy’s attitude toward the shoppers of the A&P is negative. Likewise, it becomes apparent that Sammy does not want to be stuck at this job for the rest of his life. This is seen through the comparison of Sammy to the character Stokesie:
“Stokesie’s married, with two babies chalked up on his fuselage already, but as far as I can tell that’s the only difference. He’s twenty-two, and I was nineteen this April” (Updike 16).
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