Love Analysis Essay Example

girls, is of great value to the story. Queenie seems like a typical proud teenage girl, and she serves to further characterize Sammy.

The fact that he quits his job just so this girl will notice him transforms him into a susceptible young man. As the story develops, Sammy goes from taking a mere interest in the girls to noticing their every curve and every movement. It seems as though he becomes more obsessed with them as the story develops (even though he describes them in a condescending tone) until he reaches a climax at the end when he quits his job for them. Sammy takes a superior attitude toward the beginning of the story and later contemplates what his values will bring him in the future. . The dramatic conflict becomes apparent in the story during its rising action. Sammy uses condescending language when he describes the three girls in the store, and it is obvious that his personality problem will bring trouble when it conflicts with Sammy’s job in the real world. The climax of the story occurs after Lengel approaches the girls about their attire and Sammy quits his employment. The moment when Sammy argues with Lengel can be considered the beginning of the story’s crisis.

Sammy quits his job but then says, “my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” (17). Sammy did not receive the attention he wanted as a result of his impulsive action, and he enters into a crisis when he considers his next move. Sammy quits his job to prove his rebellious attitude to

the girls, the manager, and himself. Throughout the story, Sammy assumes a superior outlook, and this culminates when he quits his job. Sammy’s haughty attitude leading up to his defense of the girls is a foreshadowing of his gesture of sympathy.

This gesture, however, is more an act to expose some level of superiority. Sammy mixes sympathy with his high attitude when he says, “Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldn’t help it” (15). Sammy pays attention to Queenie’s every movement and even considers it “cute” when she pulls money out of her chest. At the conclusion of his story, it is clear that Sammy let his age, his desires, and his anger get ahead of him. Sammy made the wrong decision in quitting his job and did not even receive any extra attention from the girls he was defending.

When he acknowledges “how hard the world was going to be…hereafter” (17), Sammy is reflecting on the fact that his current attitude will not take him very far in the real world. Updike illustrates supermarket society as a point of unity. The supermarket is a place in which people of all ages, classes, races, and ideologies go to do the same thing: shop for groceries. Sammy represents the overconfident teenager, and Updike illustrates the supermarket scene through Sammy’s eyes. Updike comments on supermarket society as a fundamental aspect of a larger society.