A & P Updike, John (Hoyer) | M. Gilbert Porter (essay date 1972)
M. Gilbert Porter (essay date 1972)
SOURCE: "John Updike's 'A & P': The Establishment and an Emersonian Cashier," in English Journal, Vol. 61, November, 1972, pp. 1155-58.
[In the following essay, Porter argues that "A & P" depicts a nonconformist philosophy akin to that articulated by Emerson in "Self Reliance. "]
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.
(Emerson, "Self-Reliance")
"Right in the middle of town" surrounded by "two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices" stands Updike's symbolic A&P. As supermarket, it is the institution where, according to any newspaper advertisement, the best values in town can be found. It is the common denominator of middle-class suburbia, an appropriate symbol for the mass ethic of a consumer-conditioned society. And it is in this...
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