Emerging Adulthood In John Updike’S A & P And Alice Munro’S Boys And Girls
It’s common for anyone to undergo numerous major events and experiences through life that can ultimately change a person’s perception or decisions for their future. There are high points like giving birth to a child or getting married, but just as significantly, there are low points such as the death of a family member or serious permanent injury. In many cultures, these key points in life are recognized and habitually celebrated or mourned, however, each milestone can be received entirely different from one culture to another. While events of initiation, such as coming of age, are mostly received positively in annual birthday traditions or at particular ages deemed significant, in some situations, it can be a mark of loss in innocence and freedom or individuality. Likewise, both “A & P” by John Updike, and “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, express the event of growing up into maturity in similar ways, but each expresses very different perspectives of growing up from the eyes of their narrators.
Sammy, the main character from Updike’s short story, finds pride in expressing his own opinion and leaving his unfulfilling job at the supermarket despite the obvious foreshadowing of hardships he will face later on as an adult. On the other hand, the nameless protagonist from Munro’s story accepts her adulthood rather unenthusiastically since she is giving up her freedom as a child and taking up the strictly defined role of a woman only because she knows she doesn’t have any other choice. Even though neither story is about birthday parties and celebrations, the protagonists both slowly realize throughout the plot that they aren’t children anymore and they eventually make independent decisions as a mark of acknowledgement in their adulthood.
Unsuspectedly, in John Updike’s coming of age story, “A & P”, the plot is centralized around a group of three young women who walk into the A & P supermarket dressed in nothing but bathing suits despite being miles from a beach. Sammy, the nineteen year old protagonist, is a cashier at the supermarket and cannot help but notice the young women with a careful but explicitly sexual eye. In the rising action of Updike’s story, he uses literary clues that hint at the immaturity and naivety of our young protagonist. While Sammy is eyeing the girls as they walk alongside the counters, he notes, “You never know for sure how girls’ minds work (do you really think it’s a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?)”. Clearly, this quote shows Sammy’s thought process that elaborates his juvenile mindset. Because Sammy has a lack of experience with girls, he stereotypes them as being dumb like many elementary and junior high school boys like to. However, as he watches the group of young women very carefully and investigates every detail of their body language, apparel, and gait, that is when Sammy starts to change.
After dawdling through the isles looking for nothing particular, the girls finally make it to Sammy’s checkout lane, and the store manager, Lengel, confronts the girls and blatantly embarrasses them. This was something that bothered Sammy; as they leave, this is when Sammy makes his independent decision and quits his job just in earshot of the girls hurrying away. Sammy seemed to be desperate for the daydream of being with Queenie, and he said he was “hoping they’ll stop and watch me, their unsuspecting hero”. But even as he failed and the girls continued to walk out the door, he followed through with his decision. The moment Sammy was initiated into adulthood was when he decided to stand up for what he believed was right, which was to defend the young women and the slim chance at having them. While it’s obvious Sammy was trying to impress the girls, I also believe that part of his decision to leave was his own opinion that Lengel should not have treated those girls that way, and he didn’t want to advocate and work for someone so insensitive.
The other coming of age story, “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, follows a different plot spanning over a much longer timeline which describes the conditions of how the narrator grew up and her slow realization of how different adulthood is like for men and women during the 1930s. In the beginning, the protagonist describes her life living with her father who is a fox farmer and his hired hand named Henry, along with her mother and her younger brother named Laird. We assume the narrator was just a child because when she describes being sent to bed, that she and Laird “were afraid at night in the winter”, which implies the common fear of darkness and the unknown that many children have growing up.
Another indication of immaturity comes from stories that the narrator tells herself at night of her own heroism that reflected her ambitions for the future, but also revealed her misunderstanding of what the world would actually be like for her. During the daytime, the narrator found pride in helping her father with his work cutting the grass and carrying water and found the work to be much more exciting and important than the work her mother offered for her in the kitchen. But the narrator begins to learn about what was expected of her as an adult when her parents start to have discussions in which she overhears her mother say, “Wait till Laird gets a little bigger, then you’ll have a real help”. Because of this, the narrator is offended to be discredited and antagonizes her mother for being against who she is and what she likes to do. From this point on, the narrator starts to learn much more about what is anticipated from her as a girl growing up and what she should or shouldn’t do, however, she continues to resist what her mother and grandmother tell her. The next winter, the narrator’s father buys two horses which they name Mack and Flora to be later shot and fed to the foxes in the coming spring.
The spring comes, and after Mack has already been shot and butchered, Flora escapes the day they try to shoot her. After seeing the first horse Mack being shot, I believe that the narrator had a change of mind that didn’t quite settle till this moment. The narrator is told to run to the gate to close it before the horse can escape, but instead, she leaves the gate wide open and disobeys her father. This decision is when she accepts that she is losing her freedom at the start of womanhood by sympathizing with Flora who is trying to run free. She knows that this was a bad decision that could disappoint her father, but I believe it is her last cry for help; if Flora could get away, maybe she could too. But they caught Flora, and she started accepting her life in the role of a woman where she can no longer enjoy the work of a fox farmer.
Both Sammy from Updike’s story and the protagonist from Munro’s story recognized by the end of each plot that they were no longer children. While for Sammy, finding his maturity was a choice provoked by admiring a group of young women in the supermarket he worked at and witnessing his manager make a scene, the narrator in “Boys and Girls” learned her womanhood a much different way by accepting her place after experiencing the strictly enforced societal standards and roles from women around her. Either way, they got there, both protagonists were both forced to make a decision that defined their adulthood, but in either a freeing or confining way.
Works Cited
- Updike, John. “A & P. ” The Norton Introduction to Literature, Thirteenth Edition. Ed. Kelly Mays. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018. 163-168. Electronic.
- Munro, Alice. “Boys and Girls. ” The Norton Introduction to Literature, Thirteenth Edition. Ed. Kelly Mays. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018. 153-162. Electronic.
