Introduction (Situation, Problem, Approach, Theme)
John Updike’s story, A&P, takes place in a small, conservative New England town. The time of year is during the summer, sometime around 1960. Most of the story is set in a small, local A & P grocery store, where the narrator is the cashier. The narrator’s name is Sammy, and he is nineteen years old. When three girls in bathing suits enter the store, he watches them as they make their rounds through the aisles, judging them and making opinions. When they check out, the manager starts berating them about their attire choice. Sammy, pursuing his own agenda with the girls, decides to stand up for them and resign from his job, but he realizes that it was all for naught. The girls didn’t …show more content…
The main theme in “A&P” is one that is instinctual to human nature. We are born with the primordial sense of judgment. It is one of the things that kept the human race alive for so long. We needed judgment to figure out which animals were predators or which humans were allies. In this day and age, preconceived judgement of other people can do nothing good for anybody. It is something that a person has to work hard at letting go of. A person cannot live their life judging other’s flaws, because if they do, they will never be able to accept their own flaws. The inability to accept another person’s imperfections come from one’s inability to accept their own imperfections. A person cannot love another if they do not love themselves first. This story is a prime example of what can happen when a person deems themselves right to judge and opinionate others. The theme is a lesson to be learned. If a person becomes so self-righteous that they deem themselves worthy of judging everybody else, then that same self-righteousness will be their downfall, because they will fail to see their own critical flaws. This is eventually what happened to
John Updike’s story, A&P, takes place in a small, conservative New England town. The time of year is during the summer, sometime around 1960. Most of the story is set in a small, local A & P grocery store, where the narrator is the cashier. The narrator’s name is Sammy, and he is nineteen years old. When three girls in bathing suits enter the store, he watches them as they make their rounds through the aisles, judging them and making opinions. When they check out, the manager starts berating them about their attire choice. Sammy, pursuing his own agenda with the girls, decides to stand up for them and resign from his job, but he realizes that it was all for naught. The girls didn’t …show more content…
The main theme in “A&P” is one that is instinctual to human nature. We are born with the primordial sense of judgment. It is one of the things that kept the human race alive for so long. We needed judgment to figure out which animals were predators or which humans were allies. In this day and age, preconceived judgement of other people can do nothing good for anybody. It is something that a person has to work hard at letting go of. A person cannot live their life judging other’s flaws, because if they do, they will never be able to accept their own flaws. The inability to accept another person’s imperfections come from one’s inability to accept their own imperfections. A person cannot love another if they do not love themselves first. This story is a prime example of what can happen when a person deems themselves right to judge and opinionate others. The theme is a lesson to be learned. If a person becomes so self-righteous that they deem themselves worthy of judging everybody else, then that same self-righteousness will be their downfall, because they will fail to see their own critical flaws. This is eventually what happened to