Nick Bailey
1-29-16
English 11 B
Comparative Essay Final Draft
“A&P” and “In Another Country” – Similar Aspects of Different Stories
“A&P” by John Updike and “In Another Country” by Ernest Hemingway are two
completely different stories with different messages. “A&P” is about a young man who examines
three teenage girls who walk into a grocery store very closely and describes their appearances in
great detail. In the end, he resigns when his manager kicks out the girls for not being properly
clothed. “In Another Country” is about an American soldier in World War I who is wounded in
the knee and is recovering from his injury, who struggles with his inner mentality that he does
not deserve his ribbons that he earned. However, despite the extremely different plots, the
literary devices used in these stories are used in similar ways. “A&P” and “In Another Country”
are completely different stories that contain similar literary devices such as internal conflict and
first person point of view, as well as the use of imagery to convey the messages that the stories
portray.
Firstly, “A&P” conveys the use of descriptive imagery to show the narrator’s inner
feelings and thoughts. “She had on a kind of dirty-pink – beige maybe, I don’t know – bathing
suit with a little nubble on it and, what got me, the straps were down” (Updike 488). This
description of one of the girls in a bathing suit portrays the narrator’s descriptive thoughts about
her, and his inner feelings. “It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then
the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows”
(Hemingway 249). This conveys imagery in a way different than how imagery was used by
Updike. However, it still conveys the narrator’s thoughts about what he’s observing. Imagery is a
common literary device used in both stories to describe parts of the setting and what the
narrator’s feel about it.
Furthermore, “A&P” uses first person point of view to show Sammy’s personal thoughts.
“I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rung it up or not”
(Updike 487). This conveys Sammy’s inner thoughts about being distracted by the girls, and not
focusing at his task at hand with his job. This also demonstrates Updike’s use of internal conflict
to convey Sammy’s distraction and fantasies that he’s having about the girls. “I had been
wounded, it was true; but we all knew that being wounded, after all, was really an accident. I was
never ashamed of my ribbons, though, and sometimes, after the cocktail hour, I would imagine
myself having done all the things they had done to get their medals…” (Hemingway 252). This
shows first person point of view as well as the soldier’s inner conflict that he feels. The narrator
in this story feels that he does not deserve his ribbons because he did not do the things the other
soldier’s did to get their medals. Both of these stories convey the narrators’ struggles with their
inner conflicts.
Lastly, the key difference between “A&P” and “In Another Country” in terms of literary
devices is their themes. “…I knew that I would never have done such things, and I was very
much afraid to die, and often lay in bed by myself, afraid to die and wondering how I would be
when I went back to the front again” (Hemingway 252). This conveys a central theme of the
story which is courage and bravery have different applications for different situations, and the
person who portrays bravery may not always believe internally what people say about them. The
narrator doesn’t believe that he deserves the medals, because he feels that he isn’t nearly as brave
as the other soldiers are. This theme created from the narrator’s internal conflict differs greatly
with Sammy’s personal fable in “A&P.” “I look around for my girls, but they’re gone, of
course…and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me
hereafter” (Updike 494). Sammy’s internal conflict is his own personal fable that the girls were
“his,” which conveys the theme that choices made by people that are not made from clear
thinking will bring bad results. Sammy’s choice was resigning from his job to chase after girls he
thought were his, when in reality they completely ignored his presence. Aside from the general
plot, this is the main difference between these two stories.
Obviously, John Updike’s “A&P” and Ernest Hemingway’s “In Another Country”
express different viewpoints from two incredibly different people in different scenarios.
However, these stories contain the same literary devices which are used to convey different
themes, such as courage is defined in different ways for different situations, and that personal
fables can cloud rational thinking. The literary devices that both stories share are internal
conflict, first person point of view, and imagery.