Compare themes and make connections in 3 stories - Essay Example

In Updike’s story, Sammy is an immature and romantic daredevil who can recklessly decides to quit his job in order to draw the attention of Quinee the leader of the girls in weird dress. Again though Steinbeck’s protagonist Elisa Allen is intelligent, enthusiastic and business-minded, she shows the signs of immature perception of the world through her romantic fascination for a hobo life. In a similar manner, Alice’s protagonist Dee’s self contradictory immaturity lies in the fact that though she shows significant awareness of her community culture and heritage, the way how she wants to preserve it will ultimately eradicate it.

Therefore, it can be assumed that though all of the protagonists apparently seem to brilliant, smart and intelligent, they are romantically immature. In Updike’s story, because of his sarcastic remarks for the coworkers and his masterful narration, Sammy seems to be quite smart and intelligent. The ways how he behaves with the girls and how he reacts to the manager’s pragmatic advice to them necessarily reveal that he is romantically immature. Being a teenager, Sammy can do anything to attract the girls in bikinis who come to his store.

Indeed, a romantic and heroic attitude towards the opposite sex drives his behavior. When in response to the manager’s warning, Quinee says that her mother asks her “to pick up a jar of herring snacks” (Updike), Sammy can easily “slid right down her voice into her living room” (Updike). He conjures up an imaginary aristocratic world wheret her parents and others in “ice-cream coats and bow ties” are “picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a big plate” and drinking the “color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in them” (Updike).

Sammy’s rich and figurative narration necessarily shows that he is quite intelligent. But it also reveals that he is hungry for such luxury. But Sammy cannot perceive the stern reality which lies beneath this luxurious facade of life. As a result, He, hungry for this luxurious life, loudly declares to quit his job in protest against the manager’s decision. So he hopes that Quinee will notice his heroism. But in contradiction to his expectations, they do not stop and “watch….their unsuspected hero” (Updike).

His limited experience fails him to perceive the reality that lies beyond romantic appearance of the world. Like Sammy’s hollow smartness, Dee Johnson seems to be quite smart. She has changed her name to “Wangaro” in order to protest against the culture and people who once oppressed her ancestors, as she says, “I couldn't bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me.” (Walker) Obviously, it is a wise decision on her part. It shows that she is aware of her ‘self’ and of her culture.

Indeed, Mama also pursues the same of having a respectable identity in the white dominated which once has enslaved her ancestors mercilessly. She dreams of talking with the white man looking in his eye. This dream of Mama to look in the eye of a white man necessarily propounds that she is also aware of her African American cultural identity, as she says, “Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye?” (Walker) Even though both Mama’s and Dee’s goals are same, Dee vehemently opposes Mama.

The way she wants to keep her cultural identity will eradicate the culture itself in the long run. She does not want to use the quilts in her