Lit. Heritage Assignment (Updike & Poems)

Lit. Heritage Assignment

After watching the interview with Updike, I saw his “A &P” in somewhat of a different light. From his perspective, Sammy really was doing something heroic it seemed. But the moral of his story as he described it seemed to be more about vain heroism. Sammy transfixed himself on the girls since he first saw them in the story, and this progressed until he finally quit his job. The point of the story to Updike, I thought was the vanity of this, in that he never found the girls, and they never knew what he did. Watching the interview did not so much change my view of Sammy as a hero, but it did help me understand where Updike was coming from when he wrote “A & P”

Sharon Olds’ poems “Rites of Passage” and “The One Girl at the Boys Party” are interesting poems delving into the subject of male leadership or headship I believe. In both poems she subtly belittles the brutish nature of boys and men. In R of P she is an overseer to the small talk of war between children, and in “The One Girl at the Boys Party”, she paints the girl as the controlling force, while the men just look on boorishly it seems. At least, this is what I got out of it. Both poems hint at feminism to me. They seem to follow Updike’s hero, in that, they question the normal definition of hero, by trivializing simple boyish talk and passions, to nothing more than vain ambition.