Characterization in John Updike’s A&P Essay

John Updikes short narration, A&P, is recounted from the storey of view of its 19 year old bank clerk, Sammy. Sammys character is particularly significant in the figment. While the work has received several different interpretations, the concentrate on of the story is clearly the lesson that the narrator learns in the course of events. The white plague of narration and verbal rendering ar especi in ally revealing for Sammys personality. The story is told in the return Tense and the style is appropriate for oral rather than written presentation.The commentarys, which focus on the coming into court and gestures of the three filles in bathing conform tos who walk into the supermarket, ar also significant as they monitor Sammys reactions. Thus, through the sensitive style used for narration and description, the story reveals Sammys subjective light of the events, his youthful, romanticistic infatuation with the three girls and his desperate, gallant but useless act. Sa mmy, who whole caboodle on the cash register of a supermarket, is dazed by the bearing of three unsalted girls, dressed in bathing suits.This is immediately seeming in the opening line of the story In walks these three girls in nonhing but bathing suits (Updike 187). The beginning of narration already reveals the meeting that the name of the three girls has on the young son. Significantly, Updike preserves the ungrammaticalities that Sammy makes in his speech. This technique has the effect of characterizing the narrator as a young, unsophisticated, middle-class boy. The whole of the story is dedicated to Sammys careful, detailed observation and description of the three girls and to his own, chivalric act, which concludes the story.The description of the three girls is in itself revealing for Sammys character. The focus is on the narrators eye, as he follows the girls from his place at the register, as they appear and disappear behind the aisles of the supermarket. He is both surprised and charmed at their appearance and their beauty. His eye is first caught by the chubby girl, vesture a green two-piece bathing suit and then by the brunette girl. Ultimately however, his focus remains with the third girl, that he calls Queenie.As the name he gives her shows, she is his favorite of the three and, in his view, the most charming one. Thus, the description is made exclusively from the narrators subjective point of view and registers faithfully his own reactions and impressions. What is significant moreover is the way in which Sammy compasss the girls on the whole. If the otherwise characters in the story are either faultfinding(prenominal) of the girls impropriety or else sexually attracted to them, Sammy is fascinated with the girls.According to his idealized perception, they are mythical or exotic creatures that belong to another world. He is so struck by their nude appearance and their natural beauty that he feels they are un wish well everything el se he has seen before. The setting of the story is particularly cardinal in this respect. As Sammy himself emphasizes, the supermarket affords only dull views, unremarkable or unsightly mess. In Sammys view, there is a striking contrast betwixt these unwonted customers wearing only bathing suits and the regular clients of the supermarket.Thus, when the girls approach with their wholeness purchase, they hesitate between Sammy and one of his colleagues on another register. Sammys description of the old couple that goes up to Stokesie is very significant Stokesie with his usual good deal 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) (Updike 193). The couple is dressed in baggy, gray pants, contrasting deeply with the girls colorful bathing suits and their young bodies.Also, Sammy is puzzled by the old couples purchases and obviously perceives them as ridi culous. On the other hand, he is not struck by the girls vestments in an unpleasant way. When he notices one of his coworkers looking at the three girls in an improper way, Sammy feels that this is unjust and he even feels sorry for them entirely that was left for us to see was old McMahon patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints. Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldnt help it (Updike 195).There are other examples in the description that emphasize Sammys own perception of the girls. For instance, he is absolutely struck by the way in which Queenie wears her suit, with the straps down She had on a kind of dirty-pink ecru maybe, I dont know bathing suit with a little nubble all over it and, what got me, the straps were down (Updike 188). The fact that the girl wears the straps of her bathing suit down is delightful for Sammy.Moreover, the fact that he is sometimes clumsy in his description, not knowing, for example, what the exact color of Queenies suit is, also speaks of Sammys character as a young boy who is not extremely pertinent in fashion matters. Also, when the manager reprimands Queenie and her companions, Sammy sees the pickle herring jar reflected in the blue look of the girl. Again, the way in which Sammy observes and describes the situation shows him to be a romantic character, who regards the girls as representatives of an exotic, mythological world.Furthermore, Sammys romanticism is obvious in the way in which he contrasts the girls with the other shoppers. For him, the others are blind to the beauty of the three siren girls You could see them, when Queenies white shoulders dawned on them, kind of jerk, or hop, or hiccup, but their eyes snapped back to their own baskets and on they pushed. I bet you could set complete dynamite in an A & P and the people would by and bragging(a) keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists (Updike 192). The others do not perceive the girls as Sammy does and are not struck by their aesthetic quality.Queenies white shoulders, bare and indicative of purity, are the symbol of the natural, uncensored by social rules world of the beach, whereas the consumers are symbols of the automatic drives of production and consumption of the capitalist society. Sammy sees the other shoppers for what they are not individuals, but the components of a system, a spotless herd, their personalities limited to the very automatic gestures and directions imposed by the shopping list. In his descriptions, Sammy sets the girls well apart from the ordinary, mechanical and artificial world of the supermarket.As critics piss emphasized, the storys symbolism clearly points to Sammy as a romantic hero who becomes lured by the beauty of the sirens Updike pokes gentle fun at Sammy because he succumbs to the girls who are cast in the roles of the legendary Sirensthe mythological temptresses who lured unwary males to their desolation (Blodgett 103). Sammy portrays the gir ls as being in sharp contrast with the common world, which is correspond by the materialist preoccupations in the supermarket.As he stands dazed by the appearance of the girls, he significantly makes a mistake on the register, ringing the akin box of crackers twice. The mistake further emphasizes Sammys abstraction into the fairytale, mythological world the three girls belong to. His final gesture of quitting his job in order to defend the girls is also significant he refuses any alliance to the pragmatic, insensitive world of the supermarket, which remains careless in front of the girls beauty.Their exoticness is further underlined by the fact that the city is far from the ocean that the girls image represents so well Its not as if were on the Cape were north of Boston and theres people in this town havent seen the ocean for twenty days (Updike 189). For Sammy, the girls are sirens who conquer him with their beauty and who also prove to have a fatal influence over his destiny in the end. Thus, Sammys register and descriptive style points to his personality and his views on the events he participates in.He embodies the young, raw youth who becomes infatuated with a bewitching, exotic girl. As Wells points out, Sammy is not aware of his sexual attraction to the girls and idealizes it, transforming it into a gesture of pureness and gallantry A&P is told after the fact by a young man now much the wiser, presumably, for his frustrating infatuation with a beautiful but inaccessible girl whose allure excites him into confusing his sexual impulses for those of honor and chivalry (Wells 129). In the end however, Sammy learns a hard lesson.His romantic view, resembling that of get into Quixote, makes him quit his job and adopt the role of the unacknowledged hero The girls, and whod blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say I quit to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping theyll fire and watch me, their unsuspected hero(Updike 194). However, like Don Quixote, Sammy obviously mistakes the girls capableness for sexual appeal for something more. Instead of the glory he expects as a hero, he is left with the uncertainty of a future without a job.The girls, like fairies, vanish into thin air and the supermarket world remains as gray as before, with its usual inhabitants I look around for my girls, but theyre gone, of course. There wasnt anybody but some young married cry with her children about some candy they didnt get by the brink of a powder-blue Falcon station wagon (Updike 196). Sammy is therefore the embodiment of an idealist, fledgling young man, who seems to believe that the three girls belong to another world. Through the use of narrative and description, Updike renders a vivid portrait of the narrator of A&P.Thus, the narrator speaks in his own language, using his own particular style. Moreover, his observation and description of the three girls and of the events is very significant, as it reveals him to be an idea list young man, with preposterous expectations of what the surrounding reality should look like. deeds CitedBlodgett, Harriet. Imagery in the Works of John Updike. New York Heldref, 2003. Updike, John. A&P. Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories. New York Knopf, 1962. 187-96. Wells, Walter. John Updikes A&P A Return Visit to Araby. Studies in pathetic Fiction. 30. 2 (1993) 127-33.