The thesis of my paper would have to be, How Being Young, While Having an Innocent View of The World Could Be Misleading. I am comparing both Tom from A Woman on The Roof and Sammy from A&P. Both characters are very similar. Yet in some ways the two characters Tom and Sammy are not much alike. Both Tom and Sammy are rather young I would say both are around seventeen or eighteen years old. The two have jobs and in the stories the theme is based around their jobs.
While both scenarios revolve around a girl, Tom and Sammy have more or less sudden impulsive thoughts. Tom approaches what turns out to be a woman he thought liked him as much as he did her and she wants nothing to do with him. While Sammy quits his job to impress the girls, which turns out to not even affect them in the slightest way. In many ways they show that they are trying to protect the girls and do something for them. As seen in this quote by Sammy in A&P.
The girls, and whod blame them, are I a hurry to get out, so I say I Quit to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping theyll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero. This quote showing how Sammy wants to be there for the girls, and be their savior. Until the end of each story they also both show or seem to be untouched by rejection until they actually know what it is like. Both have many similar characterizations, mostly they revolve around there innocent tendencies towards their view of the world and what it brings to them.
While their point of views are also similar, being that they are in basically the same situation and are looking up towards females and trying to be there for them like I said before. This just shows how much the two of them need to learn in their years to come. While there are many similarities the two Characters Tom and Sammy have some few contrasts between themselves. First off, Sammy is more of a sarcastically critical person.
As he shows as he describes the shoppers one by one as they are in they enter and shop in the store. Such as when he calls an old woman A Cash Register Watcher. His comments show how he has a keen eye for finding unattractive features, worsening his view of the store. This shows how Sammys criticism towards the women reflects his sarcastic attitude. Sammy also uses such words as houseslave and compares the shoppers to scared pigs in a chute to voice his opinion of the customers.
While Tom, in The Woman on The Roof, appears to be a more realistic person with relatively no sarcastic and critical expressions. If anything he might show some disillusion to what the woman on the roof might realistically be thinking. In conclusion of this characterization of Tom and Sammy, the two characters show many similar signs of youth and inexperience in the world of tough luck. But they do show signs of realizing from experience in these situations that life does bring some unexpected twist and turns that one has to overcome.