A&P

The whole story seems to take place within a couple of minutes. Sammy observes as these girls are stared at by other shoppers, as well as his coworkers. Sammy is turning 19 in april, and stokesie is 22 and married children. Stokesie is basically stuck working at the A&P for what we can assume will be the rest of his life. But Sammy believes this will never be his future. Lengel the store manager comes over and scolds the girls, telling this isnt the beach. At this point i believe Sammy quits because he wants to impress the girls but also because he doesn't want to be trapped at the A&P like his coworkers, stuck somewhere where girls in bathing suits in grocery stores is frowned upon. Possibly he wants to live a more spontaneous life.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

The title of the story and the context of it go hand in hand. The grandmother is referring to society as a whole, but in the story it applies to both her son and the misfit. Her son wouldn't listen to her when she suggested he take the kids to Tennessee instead of Florida due to the escaped murdered heading towards Florida. He didn't even really take it into consideration. Personally whenever my mother suggests something, i strongly take it into consideration because mothers usually know whats best/are right. Her son wasn't turning out to be what she had hoped, "a good man".

The misfit obviously wasn't a good man, being a murderer and all. Although she did try to convince him that he was in order to save herself from being murdered. She was so upset with the newer generation not being what it used to, but here she was trying to convince a murderer he was a good man. The story could be interpreted in many ways.

The Story of an Hour

"The Story of an Hour" is literally true to its name. All these emotions that Mrs. Mallard felt occurred in an hours time. I've never been in her situation before, but i can imagine how devastating it is. Her whole life changed with one sentence, one sentence of being told that her husband died. Everyone grieves in their own way and she came to accept the fact that her husband died. She seemed to try to come to terms with it by saying he was "Free". The whole grievance process varies from person to person, and if i were in her situation i definitely would not handle it how she did. It would take me months to even come to terms with it, but in hour she seemed to exhaust all the emotions she could.

Ultimately her heart couldn't handle all the emotions of finding out her husband was dead, then later on finding out he wasn't. This relates to people who, in the end cant handle the death of a loved one, and never recover. Those of you who know someone who's gone through this, know that they never end up being the same.