Saturday, October 26, 2013

Is John Updike's "A & P" written from the first-person dramatic point-of-view?

The short story "A & P" is told in the first
person. I have been unable to find any reference to first-person dramatic. "Third-person
dramatic" (or "objective") describes an narrator who recounts a story (using
he, she, they, etc.) but
maintains distance and objectivity. Third-person dramatic cannot move the plot along,
but recounts "just the facts."


With this is mind, I cannot
see the narrator of the story as "dramatic." Sammy (the boy who tells the story) is
emotionally involved in sharing the account of the three girls who visit the store where
he works. One of them has such an effect on him that he stands up to his manager at the
end when the manager chastises the girls for their manner of dress. (At the time, one
didn't walk into a store in a bathing suit. This is still the case in many places
today.) Sammy not only stands up to the manager, but he quits his job on the
spot.


This is an emotional reaction. The girls are gone:
Sammy isn't doing it to impress them. However, he is so overwhelmed by their visit, and
perhaps so changed, that he believes quitting is something he must do on principle, even
though he reasons at the time that it is probably a mistake. Sammy is intuitive enough
to know that after this, things will never be the same for
him.


With Sammy's personal involvement, based on the
definition of "dramatic" as used with third-person, I do not believe the story is told
in first-person dramatic.


(If the term "dramatic" is used
to convey a drama or a play, this also would not apply to Updike's short
story.)

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