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A & P By John Updike

1254 Words6 Pages

here is my essay , my professor says that my basic idea is that conflict between generations produces culture. this needs back up. who esle thinks this Rebellion and youth Cultures relate to our lives in a way that affects our behaviors, feelings, and emotions unconsciously. It constantly shapes our view of the world and our own personal identities. However, it arises from cleavages of generation all the time. “A&P” by John Updike was an anthologized and popular short story, about a nineteen years old checkout boy named Sammy, who quit his job to protest his manger’s disrespectful attitude towards the three young girls who are only covered by bathing suits. They represent the new generation who are not considered to be the socially accepted norm. It illustrates the two sides of the 1960s culture. Moreover, it describes the rebellious youth and the rigid elders of the sixties. …show more content…

In Short Stories for Students, Professor Peltier says, “some Americans believed that there existed people ‘out there’ who would seduce the nation's children, turn the country communist, and play rock and roll music all day in order to arouse the base, sexual longings of the populace(Peltier).” In short, the era of the American 1950s is about the stressing of conformity and sexual repression. Since the girls’ natural and non-conformist style is seemingly against the antique, uptight, ‘buttoned-down’ style, Lengel confronts them about the flesh tone bathing suits and bare feet. He is the oppressor who represents authority. He believes that the girls’ behaviors have disrupted the system which everyone needs to respect, and in turn has desecrated the society. Therefore he seems to feel that he has a responsibility to force them to conform to the conservatism within that

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Symbolism and irony play a huge role in the setting of A&P, a short story written by John Updike. The setting of the A&P is essential to the story because it shows where the story is taken place, which is an ordinary supermarket. However, Updike writes “...in walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits” (John Updike 1). Without this setting at a supermarket, the girls in bikinis could not have created such a lascivious reaction from Sammy and Stoksie because Updike says, “You know, it's one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach, where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and another thing in the cool of the A & P, under the fluorescent lights, against all those stacked packages, with her

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