The Life Changing Decisions In A&P And Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Some would say that in society people hold a stereotypical idea of most teenagers. Many people would say that all teenagers don’t think before they act which gets them into life changing consequences. They think teenagers are self-centered and only care about the opposite sex and that’s all they want. This one day comes to the young people one day having to grow up and they will have to realize that the choices they make while they are still young will one day affect them in the future. As they make the transition from adolescents into adulthood this is when the decisions that they have mad can soon be catching up to them. Updike and Oates both portray these ideas in “A&P” and “Where are You Going Where Have You Been”. The author also uses different literary devices and writing techniques to further emphasize the views which they are headed towards.
Teenagers often make crucial life changing decisions which can change their lives forever. “A&P” written by John Updike and “Where are You Going Where Have You Been” written by Joyce Carol Oates are both story’s that teenage children have to make life changing decisions. John Updike an award-winning writer born March 18th, 1932. Updike grew up in Shillington, Pennsylvania where his father was a high school math teacher and his mother wrote short stories. Joyce Carol Oates was born in Lockport, New York, where she grew up on her parents’ farm. Oates’s grandmother gifted her with her first typewriter at 14 years old. That’s when she began writing novel after novel.
The views that John Updike in “A&P” and ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ written by Joyce Carol Oates both illustrate the life changing decisions that teenagers make. Updike and Oates both also illustrate in “A&P” and ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ the story of teenagers who make the life changing choices and not thinking before these decisions. In ‘A and P,’ written by John Updike, a nineteen-year-old teenager named Sammy quits his job and A&P to impress three girls in bathing suits, to later realize that he does not know what is going for him in the future. In ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ written by Joyce Carol Oates introduces a fifteen-year-old teenage girl named Connie who leaves her home and her family to run off with a random man. The man described to drive in a gold car Connie wants to run away with the man and start a new life. Connie is clueless to all the life long challenges which she is going to have to face now. Updike and Oates both make their character out to be typical teenagers they are self-involved, resent authority, and can sometimes exaggerate, only to end the stories with the main characters as more mature adults.
