Conformity and Individuality in a Small Town Essay -- essays research

Conformity and Individuality in a Small townsfolk whoremaster Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania on March 18, 1932. His buzz off was a high school math teacher who supported the intact family, including his grandparents on his mothers side. As a child, Updike wanted to become a cartoonist because of The tender Yorker magazine. He wrote articles and poems and kept a journal. John was an exceptional student and veritable a full scholarship to Harvard University. At Harvard he majored in English and became the editor of the Harvard newspaper. Upon graduation in 1954, he wrote his first story, Friends from Philadelphia, and sent it to The new-made Yorker. This started his career and he became one of the great award winning authors of our eon.      In a transcript of a radio interview with Updike, he says his duties in the early works were to describe reality as it had come to me, to go by the mundane its beautiful due. (http//www.pbs.org/newshour/bb /entertainment/july-dec03/updike_12-29.html retrieved 7/27/05) Updike felt as though ordinary shopping center-class life was enough to write or so and that there was enough drama, interest, relevance, importance, poetry in it.The A&P written by John is about middle and, presumed, upper middle class life and the characters are ones that people can easily pose with. There is the teenage boy, Sammy, working a meaningless job ogling just clad teenage girls, a married man with children, Stokesie, doing the same, an uptight monetary fund manager, Lengel, who, in this case, is a man but could have easily been a woman in todays society, the insecure teenage girls, who Sammy nicknamed tartan and Big Tall Goonie-Goonie, following around their leader, the leader herself, Queenie, who is confident in her socioeconomic status as well as her appearance, the housewives who cover themselves in public, the cash-register-watcher, the sheep or the other people in the A&P doing their grocer y shopping, and the butcher, McMahon. All of these characters allow any reader to identify with them in some way, whether past or present.      The story takes place on a summer afternoon in an eastern coastal town at a local grocery store, the A & P. The protagonist is Sammy is a teenaged boy who works at the A&P. Sammy is in addition the narrator of the story, the reader sees through his ey... ...have given boys a hard time? Would the boys have had real names? These are questions for every reader to settle down for themselves. Annotated BibliographyPorter, M. Gilbert. John Updikes A & P the establishment and an Emersonian cashier. English Journal 61 (1972)1155-1158.Reinforces Sammys discust for the A&P clientele. At the same time, Sammy realizes he is an separate with individual thoughts and feelings that do not conform with the moral, social and ethical standards of that time.Saldivar, Toni. The graphics of John Updikes A & P. Studies in Sho rt fiction. 342(1997) 215-225.      This demonstrates Sammys desire to express his individuality and rebel against the conformity of society at that time and the A&Ps representation of that conformity.Wells, Walter. John Updikes A & P A Return Visit to Araby. Studies in ShortFiction 30.2 (1993) 127-133.     Demonstrates the maturity process of Sammy. Confusing sexual impulses for being a hero. Sammy thinks he is impressing the girls, but they dont even notice. Reinforces the individuality/conformity themes.