Reaction to “A&P” and “Fire and Ice”

I think the story A&P by John Updike is a story talking about conflict, a conflict between the new thoughts and the conservative thoughts. The three girls in nothing but bathing suits stand for the new thoughts in current society while the manager stands for the conservative thoughts from the old society. Teenagers born in the new era are more open in some aspects, dressing, sex, or relationship. However, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who still honor the traditional conservation. It seems like Updike was satirizing the old thoughts in this story. He made the manager a stubborn man who doesn’t appreciate the new standard of beauty. The manager insulted the three girls and embarrassed them, which is not respectful for individual difference. Sammy, a worker in the store, is a guy who has his own ideas. However, he doesn’t have ability to take on the result after he conveyed what he thought. He stands out for the girls, but he in the end lost his job. I look upon A&P as an irony story because I saw the unfair in the plot. The three girls don’t need to be responsible for their indecent dress or their impolite words. They can still go home and eat their expensive snacks because they were born in richer families. In contrast, Sammy did a good thing but lost his job and got nothing. He felt helpless and lost after he did what he thought was right because his power is too small to convert the reality. I think it is a story satirizing those who don’t accept the new thoughts and those who are afraid of changing.          

A poem I chose to read is “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost. It says that the world would end in either ice or fire, from one’s desire. I think the ice and that fire is the hate and the love. We are alive because of the love, but we are also died of the hate. The thing we hate can be the destruction, so it is not about for destruction of ice of fire but is about for destruction of what we don’t like. I thought the poem is about science at the first time I read it. Nonetheless, I found that it is meaningful in the word fire and ice. Fire and ice are contrast. Some people like fire, so fire makes them alive; some people like ice, so ice stands for their life. It’s not about what cause us to be alive or what makes us to be dies. It’s more like we are alive due to the love and died because of the hate. There are no standards between ice and fire. It’s relative.