While John Updike's short story "A&P" has its
narrative directed by the first-person point of view, the story is yet told from two
different levels. On one level, Updike shows readers the complex world that adults
inhabit and the compromises that are needed to function in this world. Then, on another
level, Updike displays the generation gap in which Sammy acts to protect the girls from
the world of adults only to find himself locked out of the two worlds
himself.
In order to illustrate these two levels of
insight, the reader need only compare and contrast the dialogue of the adults with the
internal dialogue of Sammy. For instance, after Sammy has committed his chilvarous act
of saying he quits, Lengel
sighs and begins to look very patient and old and
gray. He's been a friend of my parents for years. "Sammy, you don't want to do this to
your Mom and Dad," he tells
me.
But, Sammy reacts
impulsively and without thinking things through:
It's true, I don't. But it seems to me that once
you begin a gesture, it's fatal not to go through with it....remembering how he made the
pretty girl blush makes me so scrunchy inside I punch the No Sale tab and the mahine
whirs "pee-pul" and the drawer splat
out....
Once outside, of
course, he realizes "how hard the world was going to be to me
hereafter."
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