Comparing Sammy And Enn In Neil Gaiman's Short Stories

In Neil Gaiman’s short story How to Talk to Girls at Parties, the character of Enn seems like the typical, bashful friend in the story that is afraid to talk to girls. In A&P, John Updike creates the character Sammy who seems to be written as the confident, girl-obsessed young adult who is not afraid to speak his mind. Both of these characters, though, are written with more depth than what is originally observed from the beginning of the texts. While their personalities are different, both characters are extremely curious of girls. Also, Sammy and Enn are both changed by three girls that they find attractive. Comparing both of these characters reveals ideas about teenage boys and the power that girls have over them. At the beginning of Gaiman’s How to Talk to Girls, Enn is struggling to change his friend’s mind about going to a party. Vic, a friend that Enn looks up to as a role model for getting girls, does not care about

The whole story, Sammy is watching these girls and noticing the way they move. He does not seem to care about any of the guests, and dismisses them as petty sheep; blindly following their grocery shopping lists and not giving notice to anything else going on around them. Sammy seems to have a coolness about him and does not care about what many people think of him; except those three girls in their bathing suits. He also serves to be a hero to the girls at the end of the story, but goes unnoticed when they leave the store. In an analysis of the story, it is stated that “In his focus on, his attitude about, and his description of the girls, Sammy represents conventional masculinity” (Bentley). In this sense, Sammy represents more of the character of Vic from How to Talk to Girls. He is the sort of person that Enn desires to be because Sammy is not afraid to stand up for himself and fight for these girls’