Blog

The story I am responding to is A & P by John Updike. I really liked the story, I thought that it was a good example of a young man coming of age and challenging his authority figures even to the point of self sacrifice. In the story the manager of the A & P supermarket talks to some girls about dressing inappropriately in his store. This causes the main character, Sammy, to question his boss’s authority and his decision to embarrass the girls. This is how Sammy comes of age in the story. He decides to quit his job even though it will upset his parents. He decides to leave the store because he realizes that he cannot continue to work for a boss that he doesn’t respect.

I like how in the end of the story the main character realizes that due to his decision the world is going to be a much harsher place for him. He realized that doing what you feel is right will sometimes cause you to sacrifice things that make your life easy. The main character, Sammy, decides to do what he feels is right, rather than doing what is easy.

In the story there is a big difference between the main character and the customers in the A & P. The customers in the store advert their eyes as the girls in their bikinis pass. They all just stand and listen as the boss embarrasses the girls. Some of them probably agreed with the manager of the store, and if they didn’t they certainly were unwilling to say so. Sammy however, completely disagreed with the actions of his employer and he was willing to sacrifice his comfort to challenge his boss. The patrons of the store were unwilling to come out of their comfort zones to confront the store manager. I think this may have been a reason why Sammy felt compelled to say something to his boss, nobody was willing to challenge the bosses authority, besides him. Maybe when Sammy was challenging his boss, he was also challenging the customers is the store. Maybe this was Sammy’s way of challenging all of society.

Blue Eyed

This movie was a real eye opener. There is a woman like Hillary Clinton who is running a sort of class that shows the amount of racism still present in today’s culture. She takes all of the blue-eyed people and treats them how blacks are treated today. She takes the brown-eyed people and teaches them to behave the way whites behave towards blacks today. She makes the people with blue eyes sit on the floor and the brown-eyed people get to sit in chairs. She then gives each group an “IQ� test. She tells the brown-eyed people the answers. She doesn’t tell any of the blue eyed any answers. She does this to show how culturally biased standardized tests can be.

I really found this interesting because the whole time I was watching the movie I was thinking,� I have blue eyes, that could be me.� I thought it was amazing. The people on the TV were so impacted that grown men and women began to cry. They soon began to realize that they too had been discriminating against African Americans.

Some of the African Americans told stories of the persecutions. They talked about how their children feel about being black. I thought this was very interesting because I never realized that these children would still feel persecution even today. I really liked this movie because you really had to wonder if you were causing some of the pain that African Americans experienced. I really thought about it and realized that I too had probably caused some sort of pain, even if I hadn’t realized it.

I am glad that I watched this movie so that I can be more fully aware of the pain I may cause people on a daily basis. When the activity was over the people talked about how much this activity was going to change the way they felt and acted. Most of these people were like me and had never realized that they ever caused anyone any type of pain.

I would definitely recommend that all teachers do a similar activity in their classroom. The benefits that come from this experience far outweigh the possible repercussion from doing it.