Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Swimming competition introduction
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Swimming competition introduction
My story is much like Sammy in that I chose to stand up for someone; however, I do not do this out of desire for them as Sammy does. My siblings and I used to swim in a USA swim team that was very competitive and vicious about winning at nearly any cost. Once when my brother and I were swimming, my brother did an exercise incorrectly. My coach is not unlike Mr. Lengel “Then everybody's luck begins to run out. Lengel comes in from haggling with a truck full of cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into that door marked MANAGER behind which he hides all day when the girls touch his eye. Lengel's pretty dreary, teaches Sunday school and the rest, but he doesn't miss that much.”(Updike, n.pag.) In that she identifies every single mistake you make in a swim, however, unlike Mr. Lengel she becomes extremely angry. My brothers mistake was at the top of her black books, meaning that she hated it with every fiber of her being, She stomped right on over to his lane and just stood there waiting until he reached the side. When Mr. Lengel disapproves of something he gives his own signs, ...
These two stories, although written by two different authors present similarities in the characteristics of the main character. Sammy and Tommy are presented with adversity they had previously never faced. Sammy has to decide should he stand up for the girls by quitting and be the hero or should he mind his own business and keep his job. Sammy is forced to quickly make a decision which his boss Lengel feels he made to rashly. “’I don’t think you know what you’re saying,’ Lengel said” (Updike, pg. 146). For Sammy his decision is what he feels he needs to do and he never regrets his choice. Tommy is faced with adversity of a different kind, he has to decide should he believe the teacher and listen to what she is saying or should he, like the other children, think she is strange and a liar. When she loses her job Tommy is forced to make a decision, confront the child who got her fired, or stay quiet and let the matter slide as it is not his problem. For both the boys their actions could be beneficial to them or it could cause them future problems. An example, if Sammy...
He criticizes his family and their background when he says, “when my parents have somebody over they get lemonade and if it’s a real racy affair, Schlitz in tall glasses with ‘They’ll do it every time’ cartoons stenciled on.” Sammy desires to move from a blue collar to a white collar family to differentiate him from his family. He shows his growing maturity when he says, “the girls who’d blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say ‘I quit’ to Lengal quick enough for them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero.” He wants to be noticed by the girls for his selfless act of quitting his job for them. His plan does not work though, and the girls leave him to face Lengal alone. Lengal confronts Sammy and says, “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your mom and dad.” Sammy ponders Lengal’s comment and thinks to himself, “It’s true, I don’t. But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it’s fatal not to go through with it.” Sammy has begun to reach maturity and now wants to make his own decisions concerning his future and how he spends
...s that Sammy is taking a stand and that Lengel cannot change his mind about quitting. When Sammy left the store, the girls where long gone. "His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he's just had an injection of iron, and my stomach kind of felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter." This quote illustrates that Sammy knows that his parents will not like the fact that he quit, but he realizes that he has to take charge with his life, and make his own chooses without being afraid of what his parents would think. He is very happy that he had taken a stand, and he let no one change it.
At first glance, Sammy, the first-person narrator of John Updike's "A & P," would seem to present us with a simple and plausible explanation as to why he quits his job at the grocery store mentioned in the title: he is standing up for the girls that his boss, Lengel, has insulted. He even tries to sell us on this explanation by mentioning how the girls' embarrassment at the hands of the manager makes him feel "scrunchy" inside and by referring to himself as their "unsuspected hero" after he goes through with his "gesture." Upon closer examination, though, it does not seem plausible that Sammy would have quit in defense of girls whom he quite evidently despises, despite the lustful desires they invoke, and that more likely explanations of his action lie in his boredom with his menial job and his desire to rebel against his parents.
Sammy’s immature behavior is predominant throughout the short story in multiple occasions. He is judgmental
The story unfolds when, “Lengel, the store’s manager” (2191) confronts the girls because they are dressed inappropriately. To Sammy, it is a moment of embarrassment and in defiance he quits his job. The student suggests that in quitting, “Sammy challenges social inequality and is a person who is trying to
In the story "A&P," by John Updike, the main character Sammy makes the leap from an adolescent, knowing little more about life than what he has learned working at the local grocery store, into a man prepared for the rough road that lies ahead. As the story begins, Sammy is nineteen and has no real grasp for the fact that he is about to be living on his own working to support himself. Throughout the course of the story, he changes with a definite step into, first, a young man realizing that he must get out of the hole he is in and further into a man, who has a grasp on reality looking forward to starting his own family. In the beginning, Sammy is but a youth growing up learning what he knows about life in small town grocery store. His role models include, Stokesie, the twenty-two year-old, supporting a family doing the same job Sammy does yet aspiring to one day have the manager's position, and Lengel, the store manager who most certainly started out in the same place that Stokesie and he were already in. Stoksie, the great role model, continues to be as adolescent as Sammy, with his "Oh, Daddy, I feel so faint," and even Sammy sees this noting that "as far as I can tell that's the only difference (between he and I)." Sammy whittles away his days looking at pretty girls and thinking about the ways of people. He hardly realizes that this is how he will spend his entire existence if he doesn't soon get out of this job. During this day that will prove to change his life, he makes the step towards his realization. He decides that he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life working at an A&P competing for the store manager's position. Sammy thinks to himself about his parent's current social class and what they serve at cocktail parties. And, in turn, he thinks about what he will be serving, if he stays at the A&P, "When my parents have somebody over they get lemonade and if it's a real racy affair Schlitz in tall glasses with 'They'll Do It Every Time' cartoons stenciled on." He must get out and the sooner the better. He is still just an adolescent who hasn't completely thought through his decision and yet his mind is made up.
It was one gloomy afternoon that my friend and I were on the phone talking about how our day was going. I complained to her how finals week is almost here and how there is so much to do with so little time. She, on the other hand, had an interesting story to tell that day and thought it connected well with my group assigned subject. She said it was a hot sunny day to be running a mile for a fitness examination. They were to run four two hundred meters to equal a mile. While she was running, the coach constantly yelled and accused her of cheating to complete the mile. She also said that the coach did not yell at the girls who just kept walking to complete the mile. I, then, asked her if the coach wa...
My life was no walk in the park, as young as I was with so many responsibilities I will always be the person to take charge when it’s needed. Over the years I have begun to understand the meaning of perseverance. With so little to give I openly want to make the day before different from the present. With nothing but empty hands I was clueless on how to change the way I was laying out my life. Again, there was so many ways this man taught me to keep going. He told me that “Life will always kick you too your knees, but remember its all about getting back up and proving everyone wrong” I didn’t understand how I was supposed to get off my knees, Metaphorically you just stand up right? I was completely unaware of the fight I had ahead of me, and too this day im struggling to get off my knees. Over the years I learned to cope with the fact that things don’t change as fast as we want them too. I know understand that, The wisdom I learn from people isn’t just some old person saying nonsense. In the future its going to prove itself useful, by the time you realize you should have listened its after you know you made the same mistake they told you to
In sixth grade, the coach that I had was also very young and did not know a lot about volleyball. During practice, she sometimes made us watch sports movies instead of practicing volleyball. Also, my teammates were very rude and I did not get along with them. We always got team punishments because of their actions, attitudes, and bad behaviors. One time,
Failure leads to disappointments but sometimes it can result in great lessons and successes. People can go through hard times, but if they stick it out and see it through, the failures and hard times can lead to success. This happened to me recently involving soccer. It was our second game of the high school season, and we were playing Northeastern. I had started the game and after the national anthem and the announcing of our names, the game whistle had blown, singling the start of the game. The first half went by slow it seemed to never end. With the end of the first half we were tied 0-0. The halftime talk was not very positive, understandably, considering we weren't playing well. Then the whistles blew again and we took the field to start
The All in the Family episode “Sammy’s Visit” chronicles the situations and conversations the Bunker family has when they find themselves in the presence of a celebrity. The significance and use of gendered/sexed voices becomes very apparent throughout the episode as the characters interact and communicate with one another.
Throughout a persons life, they are faced with different obstacles, and different challenges of all different types. My life in particular has been full of up and downs related especially towards my soccer career. In the novel The Pact, three boys, George, Rameck, and Sam are faced with many obstacles throughout their lives, where they must learn to overcome and achieve great success on their own will power. Essentially, I have done the same thing. My soccer career has been one of my most difficult life challenges creating the person I am today. I was always taught that soccer was to be about the love of the game and that it should be fun. Unfortunately, I faced many obstacles that I needed to overcome before I could truly love the game for what it was worth. I grew and continued to love the game, knowing little at the time of the obstacles I would be faced with, and would need to overcome.
Deborah started feeling worse as it was happening more often than before. She couldn’t believe that she was getting bullied by her own supervisor. She let the time pass and thought that her supervisor might be having a bad day. The day turn into days and then into weeks. The bullying started from a simple look from her supervisor and started escalating from that point on. Deborah at first though the reason for her supervisor being upset with her was the lack of not being fast
There are so many events that change one’s life that it is rather difficult to try and decipher which of those events are most important. Each event changes a different aspect of your life, molding how one’s personality turns out. One of these events occurred when I was about twelve years old and I attempted to steal from a Six Flags amusement park. My reasoning for stealing wasn’t that I didn’t have the money, or even that I wanted what I stole all that badly, it was that all of my friends had stolen something earlier that day and didn’t get caught. After getting caught I resolved, because the consequences are just not worth it, never to steal or give into peer pressure again.