Comparing A Pair Of Silk Stockings And A & P

Imagine you are faced with two choices, where one is the right choice you know you have to make, but there is a tiny part of you that just wants to make the other choice to see what plays out. Which one would you choose? The more reasonable decision that would surely guide you down the right path, or the erratic decision that you are taking a risk on? In Updike’s “A&P”, Herbert’s “The Nothing”, and Chopin’s “A Pair of Silk Stockings”, the three central characters, Sammy, Jean, and Mrs. Sommers, have to make difficult decisions that ultimately affect the ending of the short stories.
In the story “A+P”, Sammy makes the wrong decision by quitting his job so he could be the girls’ hero, and by making this choice he allows himself to be an outcast …show more content…
For example, when Jean questions Mensor Williams, “‘Well, you’re a prescient. What does happen [in the future]?’” (Herbert 4), he replies with a most unusual answer - “‘Unfortunately, none of us are able to determine that’” (Herbert 4). In other words, if Williams is a prescient, then he should be proficient in foreseeing the future, unless he is hiding something that he does not want Jean to know. Moreover, this also shows that since Jean does not know the outcome of her future, she cannot know anything about her future, whether if she is going to face danger, or even if she is going to be happy with Claude, but it is all about taking risks; Jean does not know the outcome of her future, but she trusts that she has made the right choice by marrying Claude. Another instance where Jean should have thought twice about marrying Claude is where she ‘feels the creeps’ whenever the prescient attempts to predict something. “Just like that! These prescients give me the creeps. Sometimes I wonder if they don’t give themselves the creeps” (Herbert 3). Thereafter, Jean should have known that the prescient cannot actually predict anything. She unwisely decides to trust the precinct that claims that Jean and Claude can save the future of the humans with powers by marrying Claude. While Jean does decide to marry …show more content…
Sommers irresponsibly spends all of her money on fancy things that she knows she will never get to have in her life, therefore making her realize that going back to reality is tough. For instance, when Mrs. Sommers was wondering what to do with the rare money, the author states, “she lay awake revolving plans in her mind that she seemed to see her way clearly toward a proper and judicious use of the money” (Chopin 1). This implies that Mrs. Sommers was thinking about spending her money on the needs of her children, but she also wants to feel extravagant because she feels that she needs a well-deserved break from reality. This also shows that Mrs. Sommers cares about the needs of her children and is not selfish, as she may be presumed to be. Another example is when Mrs. Sommers exit the theater, “The play was over, the music ceased, the crowd filed out. It was like a dream ended” (Chopin 4). This demonstrates that this is the end of Mrs. Sommers’s dream, meaning she has to go back to reality to take care of her children. This also shows that since Mrs. Sommers’s dream ends, she wakes up and realizes that she could have spent her money on her children, but she forgot all about her children as she went on her shopping spree. Despite the fact that Mrs. Sommers was lightheaded when she made the choice to spend her fifteen dollars on extravagant items, Mrs. Sommers does believe that some of her money