Summary Of Courage In John Updike's 'A & P'

Quote Sandwiching

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. It is also when you leave the shallow pool, and go out in the ocean. Sammy might not be a hero, but there is a desirable aspect of him that not everyone has. He defends the weakness, he goes against the authority, and he stands up for his unhappiness.

Sammy does not enjoy a bit about his job right at the beginning. Like many people at the time, he stays because he is afraid of changing. Making a big move requires courage, which at the beginning he does not seem to have. To get rid of the boredom or perhaps to suppress his impotence, he makes fun of other people. He calls some of the customers “witch” and most of the regular customers “sheep” and “house slaves.” He even makes excessive statements about girls. He explains his incapability-of-understanding-girls is either because girls have no mind or their minds are “just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar.”

Kennedy although promotes women to join and help the world, he also implies women were supposed to be stay-at-home moms. Their roles are still behind men’s, their job are mainly to do houseworks, have babies, and serve their husbands. They were treated unequally in the 1960s. According to CNN, single women could not get a credit card for themselves; they could not go to the top schools like Yale, Princeton, Harvard and more; they earned only 59 cents for every dollar men earned; not every woman were allowed to use birth control pill as a contraceptive; they are viewed as sex objects. The role of women in the 1960s was simply submissive. Updike creates Sammy at this time period, which explains why Sammy, like other typical men, is highly viewed as a