SOURCE: "John Updike's 'A & P': The Establishment and an Emersonian Cashier," in English Journal, Vol. 61, November, 1972, pp. 1155-58.

In the following essay, Porter argues that "A & P" depicts a nonconformist philosophy akin to that articulated by Emerson in "Self Reliance. "

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.

(Emerson, "Self-Reliance")

"Right in the middle of town" surrounded by "two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices" stands Updike's symbolic A&P. As supermarket, it is the institution where, according to any newspaper advertisement, the best values in town can be found. It is the common denominator of middle-class suburbia, an appropriate symbol for the mass ethic of a consumer-conditioned society. And it is in this setting that Updike reveals, through what is almost a prose dramatic-monolog technique, the sensitive character of a...