Essay on Sensuality vs. Reality in Ernest Hemingways...

Sensuality vs. Reality in Ernest Hemingways Short Story AP John Updike once said, Man lacks grace because he has retreated from responsibility into sensuality. Sammy, the protagonist in Updikes short story, AP, is a perfect literary representation of this quote. During the course of AP, he runs from every responsibility he has, just to make himself feel better. He gets distracted from his duties at work and makes mistakes because he is busy gawking at some girls, and he ultimately quits those duties simply to try to impress those girls. Even though Sammy is nineteen, he is not mature enough to hold to his own responsibilities. Rather, he runs from them to retreat into his own sensuality. In walks three girls in†¦show more content†¦Now her hands are empty#8230;and I wonder where the moneys coming from. Still with that prim look she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow center of her nubbled pink top. The jar went heavy in my hand (Kennedy 15). All through this story, Sammy follows these girls, pondering over their persons and personalities, when, all the while, he is supposed to be concentrating on his job. He is standing behind a cash register in the AP, a grocery store. He is not there to gawk at people walking through; he is there to make sure that the customers coming through are served to the best of his ability. However, the second that something appealing walks through the door, Sammy forgets his responsibilities and begins to retreat into the sensual. When the girls first walk in, he is supposed to be checking out a customer, but is distracted by a sweet, broad, soft-looking can(Kennedy 13). As a result, he rings up a box of HiHo Crackers twice, and the witch who brought the crackers up the aisle begins to argue and yell at Sammy. Instead of simply admitting his small mistake, he insults the woman, inferring that it made her day to trip me up. Shed been watching cash registers for 50 years and probably never seen a mistake before(Kennedy 13). All the while that Sammy was watching and thinking about the girls, he could have been doing something productive. Instead, he waits until the girls come to