s” (Updike 14)The young girls seem to be just sexual objects to him. He notices everything about their bodies, but he does not seem to have too much admiration for them otherwise. He says, “You never no for sure how girls’ minds work (do you really think it’s a mind in there, or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?)” (Updike 13)When the clerk Sammy waits on the girls in the bathing suits, one of them pays him money taken out of her bathing suit top:Flynn 5Now her hands are empty, not a ring or a bracelet, bare as God made them, and I wonder where the money’s coming from. Still, with that prim look she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow at the center of her nubbled pink top. The jar went heavy in my hand. Really, I though that was so cute. (Updike 15)When the manager embarrasses the girls, by telling them not to come in the store again in bathing suits because that is the store policy, Sammy says, “Policy is what the kingpins want, what the others want is juvenile delinquency.” (Updike 15) Sammy then quits his job because the manager embarrasses the girls. Even though he has compassion for the girls’ embarrassment, his feelings for the girls still seem to be based mostly on valuing their bodies: “You’ll feel this for the rest of your life,” Lengel says, and I know that’s true too, but remembering how he made that pretty girl blush makes me so scrunchy inside. I punch the no sale tab…” (Updike 16) When Sammy leaves, the girls in the bathing suits are nowhere to be found. Even though he quit his job, and let his parents down, he expresses his Flynn 6negative view of older women, once more when he says, “There wasn’t anybody but some young married screaming with her children about some candy they didn’t get by the door of a powder blue falcon station wagon.” (Updike 16)The writers of these two stories paint ...
