A striking aspect of John Updike’s “A & P” is the way Sammy, the protagonist and narrator, describes his visual impressions, especially erotic ones centered on the three young women who enter the A & P in swimsuits. But interspersed among those impressions are several distinctive auditory sensations that collectively constitute an important feature of the story. Although “A & P” has attracted much critical discussion, virtually no commentary has examined the significance of sounds in the narrative. But as I shall show, sounds have a profound impact on Sammy and are integral to the story’s core themes of cognition, resistance, and maturation. My analysis reinforces what we might call the positive reading of “A & P,” which sees Sammy’s decision to quit his job not as a foolish attempt to impress the girls who are scolded by Lengel, the manager, for their attire, but as an act with a higher purpose: It is a stand against mindless consumerism, liberation from a dead-end job, and an assertion of adulthood. This line of interpretation, however, has been challenged by a less optimistic one that stresses Sammy’s “insensitivity” (McFarland 99) and views the tale as an updated variant of Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” or Joyce’s “Araby.” One problem with such readings is that they tend to ignore the ludic essence of “A & P” (Blodgett 237), turning what is a comic story into a grim tale of lust (Shaw 321), “self-delusion,” and “fall” (Wells 128). They also pay scant attention to the satirical light that Sammy sheds on his world, see him acting out of carnal desire rather than reason, and ignore the fact that, in recounting the story of his decision to quit his job, Sammy remarks, “my family says it’s sad, but I don’t think it’s so sad myself” (305).

中文翻译：

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厄普代克《A&P》中声音的意义

约翰厄普代克的“A&P”一个引人注目的方面是主角和叙述者萨米描述他的视觉印象的方式，尤其是以三位穿着泳装进入 A&P 的年轻女性为中心的色情印象。但在这些印象中穿插着几种独特的听觉感觉，它们共同构成了故事的一个重要特征。尽管“A&P”引起了很多批判性讨论，但几乎没有评论检查过声音在叙事中的重要性。但正如我将要展示的，声音对 Sammy 有着深远的影响，并且是故事的核心主题（认知、抵抗和成熟）不可或缺的一部分。我的分析强化了我们可能称之为“A&P”的正面解读，它认为 Sammy 决定辞职并不是为了给被 Lengel 骂的女孩留下深刻印象的愚蠢尝试，经理，为了他们的着装，但作为一种具有更高目的的行为：这是反对盲目消费主义的立场，是从无止境的工作中解放出来，是对成年的断言。然而，这种解释受到了一种不太乐观的挑战，它强调萨米的“麻木不仁”（麦克法兰 99），并将这个故事视为霍桑的“年轻的古德曼·布朗”或乔伊斯的“阿拉比”的更新版本。这种阅读的一个问题是，他们倾向于忽略“A＆P”（Blodgett 237）的滑稽本质，将一个漫画故事变成一个关于欲望（Shaw 321）、“自我欺骗”和“跌倒”（威尔斯 128）。他们也很少注意 Sammy 对他的世界发出的讽刺之光，看到他是出于肉体欲望而不是理性行事，并且忽略了一个事实，即在讲述他决定辞职的故事时，