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Heroism in the Age of Consumerism: The Emergence of a Moral Don Quixote in John Updike’s “A & P”

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Zakarya Bezdoode, Eshaq Bezdoode

DOI: 10.5782/2223-2621.2020.23.3.75

Full Article 

Abstract

This paper analyzes John Updike’s short story “A & P” in the light of Max Weber’s notion of moral decision-making. A prominent contemporary American story-writer and literary critic, Updike has devoted his fiction to subjects’ rational and moral problems in the contemporary consumerist society. Updike’s lifelong probing into the middle classes’ lives is a body of fiction that raises questions about determinism, moral decision, and social responsibility, among others. “A & P” is a revealing example of such fiction and one among Updike’s most frequently anthologized short stories. The story, titled after a nationwide American shopping mall in the early twentieth century, investigates the possibility of decision-making within consumerist society. This paper demonstrates how Updike’s portrayal of his characters’ everyday lives reveals the predicament of intellectual thinking and moral decision-making in a consumerist society and warns against the loss of individual will in such societies.

Keywords: John Updike, Max Weber, intellectual decision, morality, “A & P”

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