Compare And Contrast Raymond's Run And A & P

We’ve all been cocky about something in our lives at some point, but being arrogant is a different story. Being cocky is when you’re overconfident, but arrogance is when you see yourself superior to everyone. In the short stories Raymond’s Run and A&P the authors examine arrogance, cockiness and contempt and how the main characters resolve conflict. Squeaky, the main character in Raymond’s Run, shows cockiness rather than arrogancy. However, the main character of A&P, Sammy, is arrogant because he thinks that everyone is below him and has a bad thing to say about everyone. Squeaky and Sammy have many similarities yet they are very different. First, in the short story Raymond’s Run, by Toni Cade Bambara, the main character Squeaky is cocky but still cares about other people besides only herself. She thinks very highly of herself because she’s a talented runner.

He works at a suburban grocery store (A&P) and judges every person that walks in. One day, when three girls walk in the A&P in nothing but bathing suits, he puts label after label on them in his head observing everything they do, “(do you really think it’s a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?)” (Updike, 1). Sammy thinks of himself as a superior to everyone else, even these girls that he’s practically obsessed with. His manager doesn’t think so highly of them. He tells them that they can’t go to the A&P dressed for the beach. This embarrasses the girls a lot, but Sammy sees this as an opportunity to become their “hero”. So as they’re walking out Sammy tells the manager that he quits. After the manager and Sammy argue about it Sammy walks out to the parking lot to look for “his girls” that he thought would like him because he stood up for them, but they were gone. Sammy, in his head, thinks he ranks higher than everyone around