A & P
John Updike’s short story “A & P” is full of chaos. At first the reader speculates what the short story is about and why it is called “A & P”. The narrator Sammy tells and describes all the things he sees and experiences while working at “A & P”. The text’s artistic value comes from its plot, characters, theme, and style.
In the plot of the story, the protagonist, Sammy, starts by describing three girls who have walked into the A & P grocery store where he works. The three girls are wearing nothing but bathing suits. Sammy is so distracted by the three girls that he cannot recall if he rang up a box of crackers or not. He thinks to himself, “I stood there with a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not” (Updike 163). After trying to remember if he rings up the item or not, his customer, “a witch about fifty,” lets him knows very quickly and loudly that he did ring it up. Throughout the plot of the …show more content…
Updike writing paints a very realistic painting of the things that the readers are faced with throughout the story. The writing style is an important part of the message that the story is trying to tell. Updike’s word choice in the story is very sexual and exclusive. For example, the narrator quoted that a dollar bill “just come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known” (Updike 166). Sammy is characterized by being your typical teenage boy. In this sentence and throughout the paragraph John Updike’s reader experiences a lot of different emotions of love and romance. Updike’s character narration is mainly written in a realistic and simple sentence structure. The text’s artistic value is based on the style of the story. which includes author’s use of sentence structure, word choices, and sentence arrangement. All these things coincide together to bring about different humor, and most importantly the meaning of the
John Updike’s short story “A & P” is full of chaos. At first the reader speculates what the short story is about and why it is called “A & P”. The narrator Sammy tells and describes all the things he sees and experiences while working at “A & P”. The text’s artistic value comes from its plot, characters, theme, and style.
In the plot of the story, the protagonist, Sammy, starts by describing three girls who have walked into the A & P grocery store where he works. The three girls are wearing nothing but bathing suits. Sammy is so distracted by the three girls that he cannot recall if he rang up a box of crackers or not. He thinks to himself, “I stood there with a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not” (Updike 163). After trying to remember if he rings up the item or not, his customer, “a witch about fifty,” lets him knows very quickly and loudly that he did ring it up. Throughout the plot of the …show more content…
Updike writing paints a very realistic painting of the things that the readers are faced with throughout the story. The writing style is an important part of the message that the story is trying to tell. Updike’s word choice in the story is very sexual and exclusive. For example, the narrator quoted that a dollar bill “just come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known” (Updike 166). Sammy is characterized by being your typical teenage boy. In this sentence and throughout the paragraph John Updike’s reader experiences a lot of different emotions of love and romance. Updike’s character narration is mainly written in a realistic and simple sentence structure. The text’s artistic value is based on the style of the story. which includes author’s use of sentence structure, word choices, and sentence arrangement. All these things coincide together to bring about different humor, and most importantly the meaning of the