Suzuki !

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Shimpei Suzuki
Mr. Cosmin Ritivoiu
College English 2: Literary Analysis
3 March 2015
Sympathy
Human being always needs sympathy. It is impossible that one lives alone without having
any friends and companies. Allen the author of A Supermarket in California is just another
example of a person who is in need of sympathy. He successfully expresses this feeling in this
poem by using Walt Whitman who lived about a century back from when Allen lived. It is
interesting to analyze how he shows his feelings in his poem.
This poem shows the change of society from the old America. The phrase whole
families shopping at night! tells that shopping is done by whole family instead of by mother.
According to the article American Women and the Making of Modern Consumer Culture,
Kathy L. Peiss states that women are considered greatest consumers among their families by
advertisers and manufacturers by the 1910s because they would mostly buy food, apparel,
appliances, etc. Around 1900s, women were still supposed to be in charge of household
including shopping, while their husbands worked all day long. Therefore, women were the great
target for suppliers. Nowadays, it became norm that whole family goes to supermarket together.
Also, at night implies that people in postmodern society are active during night. It was not the
norm to shop at night before. However, people started to shift their activity from day to night.
From these two points above, it is shown that the society greatly changed after a century passed.

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The author seems that he misses the old America and presumes that Walt Whitman would
agree with him if he lived in post-modern time. America changed a lot from 1800s. Since the
author asks Whitman where he would go after the store closes, he and Whitman have no
particular place that they could stay. In other words, that were both lonely. Apparently, Allen had
a cultural conflict against the society since he was known as homosexual. By introducing
Whitman, he was able to express his need for sympathy.
Allen thought that Whitman would poke among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing
the grocery boys because these situations would have never happened in 1800s. People would
have known who killed chopped porks sold in markets unlike post-modern time. In addition,
Whitman would be surprised that many husbands are looking at grocery products in aisles. He
would have hardly ever seen men shopping at market. Since it is the trend that there are
abundance of food, wives and babies appear to be in fruits and vegetables, namely avocados and
tomatoes. Post-modern era is the period of time during which richness of materials and products
are the norm. People in the fruits and vegetables represent the reality that people have so much
food that they cannot consume them. They are almost drawn in food.
To sum up, Allen uses Whitman in his poem to express his loneliness in the society.
Historically, both men lived in different ages, but they would undergo the same feeling if they
both had lived in the same era. The author expresses the dramatic change of the society by using
vegetables and fruits as an example of abundance of produces. Then, he supposes that Whitman
would surprisingly realize the huge difference between his time and post-modern time. By doing
so, Allen succeeds in creating the imagination that there is at least one person who can
understand how he feels.

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Work Cited

Peiss, Kathy L. "American Women and the Making of Modern Consumer Culture
the Electronic Text." American Women and the Making of Modern
Consumer Culture --- the Electronic Text. The Journal for MultiMedia
History, 26 Mar. 1998. Web. 03 Mar. 2015.