Updike Interview and Comparisons between two poems by Sharon Olds

When veiwing the interview of John Updike, author of "A & P", my opinion of the story and its characters remain the same. Meaning, I still see the character, Sammy the cashier, craving the attention of three rebelious girls who enter the store in bathing suits. Sammy believes he is some type of hero when he defends the girls from his boss, who shares how he thinks the girls are inappropriate. I found it interesting that Updike based some parts of the story off personal experience. He had once entered a store and noticed a woman in nothing but a bathing suit. He felt that it was shocking and expressed his experience through the character of Mr. Lingsdnf, which was actually the same name as his mother’s manager and boss’s name.

Digging deeper into the character of Sammy, my opinion is the same of Updike’s. We can see that Sammy is a blue collared worker who desires to be noticed by a wealthy beauty. He thinks that because he sticks up for these girls, they will recognize him as some type of hero. Unfortunately, they do not even notice him and immediately take off when they exit the store. This makes Sammy realize that life will be hard and that he will go through life doing things for others and receiving no credit. I think it’s fair to say that Sammy is an oddball of the town. He wants more than the life offered in the A & P. We can see that he does not want to get caught up in the sheep like routine of the store, where he spends many hours in.

“Rites of Passage”, by Sharon Olds, is a very ironic poem that describes a mother’s child and his friends like older men. They are seen acting as children who are very aggressive and almost vicious, which perhaps foreshadows their life as grown men. This is similar to the future of Sammy in “A & P”. If Sammy were to stay in the store, he would become just like his boss. We can also find similarity between Sharon Old’s poem “The One Girl at the Boy’s Party” and “A & P”. The girl in this poem is somewhat like Queenie of “A & P”. She is described in almost every detail by her mother. Like in “Rites of Passage”, it seems that these mothers who describe their children are very protective and can be somewhat like a hero to their own children. This differs from Updike’s view of a hero in his story because these mothers have more to be recognized for. Unlike Sammy, they give a sense of protection to their children, knowing them so well. The two poems express the heroism of motherhood.