Houseslaves and Nubble

The most interesting to me of the assigned readings was A&P by John Updike (though not necessarily in a good way).

After reading the questions that follow the short story, I wanted to focus on number 3 about analyzing voice. It says to discuss the impact of Sammy's attitude on the narrative. Point to places in the text where Sammy interprets events rather than reports them objectively.

There is nothing objective about this piece, Sammy's voice is very strong and everything is tainted by it. 

I found him to be a very unlikable guy. Perhaps being a girl and having him repeatedly call someone in a bathing suit fat? I don't know. I thought he was pretty rude. Very typical teenage boy, talking about her can. I didn't like him referring to women as "houseslaves." 

There were times in the story, however, where I liked his narration. When he calls the shoppers "sheep" pushing their shopping carts. He says an explosion wouldn't disturb them.  

His attitude throughout the story is very negative. Even describing the girl he thought to be attractive he uses words like "nubble" and "dirty-pink," everything had negative connotations. While the imagery is strong, it is strong in an off-putting way.

Is there any wonder that he quits in the end? You can feel his distaste of the people he works with, the "sheep" he has to see everyday, and his general negative attitude. It was also very much like a teenage boy to try and show-off to girls he appears to find attractive. 

In general, it is a well written story, but I didn't really like it in the way that I enjoyed reading it. For analyzing characters and voice it was a very good piece of literature. Perhaps a boy would like to read it better than I would?