A&P Carter

Updike is best known for his realistic and often sexually explicit novels such as this short story. The story take place in an A&P supermarket which back then is was part of the biggest food retailing chain in the United States during the middle of the twentieth century. This story is narrated by Sammy, a young cashier at the supermarket A & P. The grocery store is in a small Massachusetts town. It was a Thursday afternoon Sammy, the 19 year old narrator of "A&P," notice three girls in bathing suits entering his store, which is otherwise mostly populated with middle aged housewives. Things were going OK until Lengel the manager showed up. The girls are in Sammy's checkout lane preparing to pay and be on their way. But Lengel feels the need to tell them they are not dressed right for the A&P. Sammy doesn't like the way Lengel treats the girls, so, after ringing them up, he quits his job. This is certainly a climactic moment in Sammy's life the first time he is ever quit a job, and the story's big emotional moment. The story ends with Sammy alone outside in the parking lot. As he watches his ex boss through the windows doing his old job, Sammy feels a sense of fear, a feeling that quitting his job really will make things harder for him in the future.
While Sammy's limited perspective might make him unreliable, it also shows some major growth on his part. It also shows us that he is willing to think and act differently than the people around him. We think the fact that Sammy's point of view changes over the course of the story is more important than him just being a narrator. At the beginning of the story he is simply whining and complaining in his mind. By the girls wearing their bathing suits into the store and showing Sammy how you can be different helps him stand up for himself. Sammy follows by removing his A&P bow tie and apron when he quits, expressing unity with the girls and using his clothing, like them, as a form of symbol. Over the course of the story, he goes from complaining about what he sees as a problem to actually doing something about it. A&P is the story of Sammy's coming of age. Quitting his job to stand up against conventional morality is a defining moment in his life. At the end of the story, he is afraid it will give him a bad reputation in his community and hurt his chances at getting ahead in life. Updike said that Sammy thinks life will be hard for him because he lives in a small town where everybody knows everything about everybody, and he might get a reputation as a "quitter."
Hurley, C. Harold.”Updike and the Critics: Reflections on ‘A & P.’” Studies in Short Fiction 20 (Spring-Sumer 1983): 95-100
Shmoop Editorial Team. "A&P Analysis" Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 9 Oct. 2013.
Shmoop Editorial Team. "A&P Writing Style" Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 9 Oct. 2013.
Flannery O’ Conner
A Good Man Is Hard To Find O’ Conner Often wrote in a Southern Gothic style & relied heavily on regional settings & grotesque characters and which also reflected her Roman Catholic faith, frequently examining questions of morality and ethics. The story takes place in Georgia. The city where the family lives are unknown and then it takes us various places along the road as the family travels. There are the old plantations that get passed and Red Sammy's roadside barbeque joint. The second half of the story takes place in the ditch in the middle of nowhere where the family lands after running off the road. I believe the ditch is about ten feet below the road, and lies between the road and a "tall and dark and deep" forest. In the beginning there is a murderer called The Misfit on the loose. We suspect that he is lurking in our characters future. Back in the car, the grandmother wakes from a nap and realizes that a plantation she once visited is nearby. The grandmother suddenly remembers that the house was in Tennessee, not in Georgia. Pitty Sing escapes from the basket and startles Bailey, and causes an accident. The children’s mother breaks her shoulder, but no one else is hurt. The grandmother decides not to tell Bailey about her mistake. A passing car stops, and three men get out, carrying guns. The grandmother thinks she recognizes one of them. The Misfit shows up, making the situation much worse. The grandmother endangers the family by revealing that she knows who he is. One by one, the family members are killed in the woods, until only the grandmother is left. She keeps telling him he is a good guy over and over. The grandmother begins pleading for her own life. When The Misfit ignores her pleas, she tells him to pray to Jesus. The Misfit becomes very angry. "There's no pleasure but meanness," says The Misfit. "You’re one of my own children!" the grandmother says. When she reaches out and touches The Misfit, he shoots her three times. The Misfit takes a moment to clean his glasses, saying she would have been a good woman if someone had been there to shoot her every minute of her life. O'Connor's fiction is often called "Southern Gothic”. There's a looming sense of darkness, suspense, and foreboding about the story, which is established right at the beginning when the grandmother reads about The Misfit in the newspaper. The story is told in the third person, and it centers singularly on the grandmother. She is the character we are told the most about. The grandmother considers herself morally superior to others by virtue of her being a “lady,” and she freely and frequently passes judgment on others. She also takes any opportunity to judge the lack of goodness in people in the world today. The grandmother never turns her importance on herself to inspect her own hypocrisy, dishonesty, and selfishness. For example, at the beginning of the story when she sneaks Pitty Sing into the car, lies to the children about the secret panel, and not to reveal that she made a mistake about the location of the house. When the Misfit thoroughly murders the family, the grandmother never once begs him to spare her children or grandchildren. However she does plead for her own life because she cannot imagine the Misfit wanting to kill a lady. In Conclusion, John Updike and Flannery O’ Connor are both great writers. Updike turns the most ordinary people, events and things into interesting stories. His writing contains strong symbolism with ordinary images or objects. People can easily relate to his writing because he writes about issues that people face all the time. Updike wrote about so many different topics and themes. He once said, “If I know about it, I’ll write about it.” O’ Conner often wrote in a Southern Gothic style & relied heavily on regional settings & grotesque characters and which also reflected her Roman Catholic faith, frequently examining questions of morality and ethics. They both had something in common between “A&P” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” which were that the setting of the climax of the story contributes to a change in the character’s personal perspective. The thematic climax of the story involves when the misfit thoroughly murders the family and the grandmother never once begs him to spare her children or grandchildren. However she does plead for her own life because she cannot imagine the Misfit wanting to kill a lady. A&P is the story of Sammy's coming of age. Quitting his job to stand up against conventional morality is a defining moment in his life. While Sammy's limited perspective might make him unreliable, it also shows some major growth on his part. It also shows us that he is willing to think and act differently than the people around him. We think the fact that Sammy's point of view changes over the course of the story is more important than him just being a narrator. At the beginning of the story he is simply whining and complaining in his mind. By the girls wearing their bathing suits into the store and showing Sammy how you can be different helps him stand up for himself. Both A&P and A Good Man Is Hard to Find are great stories that all have symbols and themes. Both stories are also written in a unique style from realistic and often sexually explicit novels to O’ Connor Southern Gothic style, grotesque characters, and which also reflected her Roman Catholic faith
Shmoop Editorial Team. "A Good Man is Hard to Find Plot Analysis" Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.
"National Book Awards – 1972". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-30. (With essays by Alice Elliott Dark and others (five) from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 10: Flannery O'Connor." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. :http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap10/oconnor.html (10/10/2013).