A & P and The Man Who Was Almost a Man - Essay Example

Men struggle to achieve and uphold their masculinity in different ways they thought are a manifestation of a real man. As they try their best to keep their manly image to the society, they neglect the fact that it is not in the physical characteristics of a man that one becomes a real man. It is but the emotional and psychological sense of responsibility that a man is able to prove one’s masculinity. In John Updike’s A & P and Richard Wright’s The Man Who Was Almost a Man, the main characters of the story demonstrate the social and psychological dilemma that of two individuals who wish to exercise their manhood in different ways.

Just as any young man who hopes to be a part of the society that defines a real man according to physical and psychological strength that goes back to history (Melnick, 2011). Similarly, the books also illustrate how boys could easily achieve their so-called desired “manhood,” yet go through such painful a painful battle of upholding such new found manhood. Dave and Sammy are but boys who simply wished to act like men in order to let it be known to the society that at this moment in their lives, they are but men who are practicing their masculinity.

Their desire to get rid of their boyhood led them to discover the battles that a man has to go undergo in order to know what being a man truly means in the eyes of the people around them. Sammy, a bagboy at A & P saw an opportunity to act like a man by quitting his job in order to show his disapproval of Lengel, his employer’s harsh comment on the girls who went to the store wearing clothes that are supposedly only to be worn at the beach. Growing up to be a man can be as fun as Sammy has experienced working as a cashier in the store that is run by a friend of his parents.

As an adolescent, he has learned how to appreciate the beauty that girls his age possess in the physical aspect. His careful observation of the girls’ physical appearance on the first day that they have entered the store shows his attraction to them based on their superficial characteristics. Physical attributions such as a girl’s body frame, color, eyes, clothes and the like are what boys see of their opposite sex. They become physically attracted to them, yet this attraction goes beyond simply what is seen by the eyes alone.

However, Sammy’s description of the girls is far from acting like a man. It was easy for Sammy to judge the girls in his mind without hesitation simply by looking at the way they look and their movements. Not only did Sammy show his immaturity as a man with the manner in which he described the girls, but in the way that he described the woman at the counter who he thought of nothing but “If she’d been born at the right time, they would have burned her over in Salem (Updike, 1961).” Since Sammy was too much into assessing the girls who are wearing but bathing suits, he did not give as much attention to “witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows (Updike, 1961).

” His judgmental attitude towards the girls is also a manifestation of how much less he is acting, or rather thinking like a man. Regardless of age, men should respect women as they have been brought into this world by their mothers who sacrificed their lives for them. His being a judgmental man continues as Sammy wondered about hoe girls’ minds work. “Do you really think it’