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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Updike’s writing style in “A&P” is both conversational and lyrical. The story is told from the first-person perspective of a working-class 19-year-old named Sammy whose narration features grammatical errors and run-on sentences alongside rich descriptions and figurative language. These aspects of Updike's style come across in the following passage, which comes near the end of the story as Sammy rings Queenie up, taking from her a dollar bill she has just pulled out of the top of her bathing suit:
I uncrease the bill, tenderly as you may imagine, it just having come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known were there, and pass a half and a penny into her narrow pink palm, and nestle the herrings in a bag and twist its neck and hand it over, all the time thinking.
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