In both John Updike’s “A&P” and Junot Diaz’s “How to Date a Brown girl, Black girl, White girl, or Halfie” the main narration of the stories comes from the perspective of two teenage boys, who also happened to be the stories main characters. The similarities in their subjective viewpoints is quite clear at times, and clearly influences their narration. The similarities of being too young man who are coming-of-age, unreliable at times, in the midst of puberty and developing sexually, and while trying to work against the norm when it comes to their expected behaviors.
Both narrators are coming-of-age, young adult men in the midst of evolving into full adulthood. What makes them subjective and unreliable as narrators is the fact that the story is being told through a filter of their perspectives as young men in the world. The fact that the story is
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In “How to date a brown girl….” Diaz’s main character is a Dominican young man growing up in poverty and living in a poor part of town. He works hard to hide this impoverishment from certain girls he tries to get with. Diaz uses lines like “Clear the governed cheese from the refrigerator” (Diaz, p.178) to show how the young man’s family is poor and receiving government assistance. Having these details helps the reader understand the young man’s perspective and add to the setting. In Updike’s “A&P” the title itself gives the setting, a small-town grocery store the narrator works in and the setting also helps set its own tone. Details like the main character and narrator Sam stating, “I forgot to say he thinks he’s going to be manager one day, maybe in 1990” (Updike, p.748) when talking about a young coworker, help add to the setting explaining the story takes place in a time when three girls in bathing suites outside a beach setting may draw scornful