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Literary criticism for john updike's a&p
Literary criticism for john updike's a&p
Literary criticism for john updike's a&p
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Why do many strive to become independent or just do something bigger in life? With Updike’s “A&P” and Welty’s “Why I Live at the P.O.”, we get a first person look into two similar but different people’s lives and struggles. In “Why I Live at the P.O.” sister is the main character and the narrator. The same is for “A&P” but Sammy is the main character and narrator. Sammy and Sister throughout the stories battle with their want of being independent. Sister is jealous of her younger sister Stella-Rondo’s life from the beginning saying “She always had anything in the world she wanted and then she’d throw it away” (Welty 261). Like sister Sammy was always in search for a way to become independent or his own person in life. Sammy though presents his drive to be independent not so openly with the reader. Both characters throughout each story use their own techniques to put themselves closer to the ultimate goal of being independent and on their own. Through the stories we see that in the pursuit of independence Sister has a more thought-out approach to her plan, while Sammy has a more passive instinctive approach to becoming independent.
The need for independence from Sister is greater for she doesn’t really have a stable family life. As the oldest that still lives at home when her sister Stella-Rondo comes home there is an increase to her want to become independent and get away. The sisters do not care for each other as Sister says “She was first to go with Mr. Whitaker until Stella-Rondo broke them up” (Welty 261). This is a major point that lets us understand that sister does have a huge problem with Stella-Rondo, and helps us to understand that there is a grudge and a need to be better than one another. The only way Sister see...
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...ught process. In “Why I live at the P.O.” the way we see her family talking about her and how her family doesn’t get along we feel the want for Sister to become independent and get away from the disrespect of her family. “Why I Live at the P.O.” and “A&P” both character narrators are searching for their independence from the rest of the people around them and the world, but Sister finds a planned out way and succeeds were Sammy doesn’t plan and acts on impulse losing everything.
Works Cited
Welty, Eudora. “Why I Live at the P.O..” Literature and the writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan,
Susan X Day, And Robert Funk. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2005. 261-269. Print.
Updike, John. “A&P.” Literature and the writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan,
Susan X Day, And Robert Funk. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2005. 261-269. Print.
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of the book. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2007. 695-696. Print. The.
This story represents a coming-of-age for Sammy. Though it takes place over the period of a few minutes, it represents a much larger process of maturation. From the time the girls enter the grocery store, to the moment they leave, you can see changes in Sammy. At first, he sees only the physicality of the girls: how they look and what they are wearing, seem to be his only observations. As the story progresses, he notices the interactions between the girls, and he even determines the hierarchy of the small dynamic. He observes their actions and how they affect the other patrons of the business. Rather, how the other people view the girl's actions. His thought process is maturing and he starts to see things as an adult might see them.
Throughout the story, it has been Sister who has tried to persuade the reader to take her side in the debacle with her family. The truth is that it was Sister who caused the entire dispute that is going on with her obsession to compete with her sister that goes back to her childhood where she feels that Stella-Rondo is spoiled and continues to be spoiled up to the end following Sister’s desperate need for attention.
...g. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. New York: Pearson, 2013. 549-51. Print.
By Justin Kaplan. (Penguin Group (USA), 2006. Pp. 208. Prologue, content, acknowledgements, sources, index. $13)
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F. Ritter, Craig R. Kochel, and Jerry R. Miller, serves as the basis of my report on the
On Saturday, April 25th, the class went on a field trip to different locations around the Blacksburg-Christiansburg area to view different land formations typical of the Virginia area. We visited a total of eight sites to include the Kentland Farms, VT airport, Blacksburg Golf Course, and several road side areas. The weather conditions that day were cloudy with intermittent showers making the ground very wet and reducing visibility across large landscapes for the majority of the day. This paper will serve a summary of each stop made and will tie all of the observations together into big picture concepts for the New River basin.
Denby, Edwin. ?Review.? Merce Cunningham. Ed. James Klosty. New York City, NY: Saturday Review Press, 1976. 213.
Tom Quirk and Gary Scharnhorst. Vol. 1. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006. 380-386. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. Niles North High School. 3 Mar. 2008.
6th ed. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Harper Collins, 1995. 118-29.
of the book. Eds. James H. Pickering and Jeffery D. Hoeper. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1027-28. Mullen, Edward J. & Co.
Hollis, Ted and James Bedding. "Can We Stop the Wetlands From Drying Up?" New Scientist. 2 July, 1994: 30-35.