John Updike vs. Me

I was very enlightened after watching the interview with John Updike online. It was interesting to see the author’s perception of the story “A &P” in comparison to mine. Overall, I feel like I had a lot of the same thoughts about this story as John Updike did. When reading the story, I became very aware of the fact that Sammy was infatuated with the three girls in bathing suits. The way he looked at them and took notice of every detail about them, and put them, especially Queenie, on a pedestal. In Updike’s interview he mentions the fact that Sammy is kind of a blue-collar boy looking for a white-collar girl. He mentions social hierarchy, and the fact that the girls are clearly above Sammy. It was refreshing to see that when reading the story I had the same perception about the relationship between Sammy and the girls as what the author was trying to portray. One of the differences between my perception of the story and Updike’s was that he sees Sammy’s act in the end as a “noble deed”, where I just see it as him looking for attention. In Updike’s interview he never once refers to Sammy as a hero, in fact, he states the exact points that I use to prove Sammy was not a hero. He mentions that Sammy “gives up his job for the girls”, and that “he becomes their champion even though they don’t know it”. The fact that he wanted the girls to see the deed he committed made him un-heroic. I believe that in a way John Updike had the same view about Sammy being a “hero” as I did. Overall, the way I viewed Sammy was much the same as the way Updike viewed Sammy and therefore my thoughts stayed the same after watching the interview.