Document Type
Original Study
Subject Areas
Language/Linguistics and Literature
Keywords
John Updike, Max Weber, intellectual decision, morality, “A & P”
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.
How to Cite This Article
Bezdoode, Zakarya and Bezdoode, Eshaq
(2020)
"Heroism in the Age of Consumerism: The Emergence of a Moral Don Quixote in John Updike’s “A & P”,"
Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences: Vol. 23:
Iss.
3, Article 4.
DOI: 10.5782/2223-2621.2020.23.3.75
Available at:
https://kjhss.khazar.org/journal/vol23/iss3/4
Publication Date
2020