Snippet of John Harvin

I'll most likely significantly change some stuff from this:

The Story of John Harvin

By Dan Crisler

            Nowadays, John Harvin spends his days in an rural jail. He was falsely accused and convicted of murderin’ a young street rat in a bank robbery gone wrong. What that street rat was doin’ near a bank was only known by the Lord. John Harvin happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This don’t mean John Harvin was a good man, but he certainly wasn’t as evil as people made him out to be.

            Before John Harvin got all mixed up in this, he ran a barbershop. As a barber, John dealt with all sorts of characters. There were men and women, young and old, rich and poor.

Show, Don't Tell

1. She was a big woman.
a. She was comparable to the giraffes at the zoo.
b. She could be the subject of the Charles Brown song "Big Legged Woman."
c. If the Sun was just right, her shadow could fill the entire room.

2. It was a scary neighborhood.
a. The street corners were littered with prostitutes who looked like meth addicts.
b. Every time there was a group of unseemly characters, I would cross the street to avoid possible confrontation.

3. The wreck happened quickly.
a. In a flash, what had been a car was now a mangled wreck with bodies strewn inside.
b. Pieces of a car landed in a ditch, the median, and four lanes of traffic.

A&P musings

I thought that while the Sammy, the narrator, may have had his heart set in the right place by defending those girls in his own way, he made too much of a reactionary decision without thinking about the consequences down the road. While the treatment of the girls was too harsh, walking out and simultaneously quitting hurts the chances of employment in the future when it comes time to getting recommendations from past employers.

Also, the narrator seems to be easily influenced by people.  He leaves, and screws himself over in the process, all because of some hot babes in swimsuits. He has never interacted with these girls before, so he has nothing invested in them. But he feels the need to be a white knight and takes a stand by walking out. The narrator realizes it was not the best decision to make when he realizes the girls did not see any of his heroics. Now he’s left without a job and a girlfriend.

John Updike creates tension throughout this story besides the confrontation between the manager and the ladies plus Sammy. One part that illustrates this tension is when he describes the girl’s blush when Lengel confronts her, or “maybe it's just a brush of sunburn I was noticing for the first time, now that she was so close.” The “now she was so close” line demonstrates the tension of maybe being able to talk to this girl and perhaps be flirty.

Another part of finely crafted writing is when Sammy quits. Normally when we read about someone storming out, we don’t think too much about external circumstances such as the weather. We generally take it at face value when a character storms out. Updike points out that summer is ideal for this situation because it allows the character the character to make a dramatic exit rather than experiencing an awkward moment of finding and putting on his coat all the while with people watching.

The description of this story mostly revolves around how the girls look. He comments about the swimsuits. He also comments on their tan lines and his position in the third check out slot and they are over by the bread. Sammy also describes about how it is summer so he does not need to grab a coat when he storms out at the end, which makes everything more dramatic

The dialog is forceful yet barely confrontational between the manager Lengel and Queenie, the head girl. The dialog also deals with lust when Sammy and his coworker, Stokesie, check out the girls they can’t have, in Sammy’s case because he doesn’t talk to them. Stokesie can’t flirt with them because he is married. The narration is told from a first person view. We don’t find out the narrator’s name is Sammy until Lengel addresses Sammy.