Generally, people have the tendency to judge individuals by their appearance, exactly the way they judge a book by it's cover. However, appearance doesn't always help reveal a person's true colors. In the stories "A & P" by John Updike, "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, and "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin the theme of illusion vs. reality are used throughout each story. Although each story differs in the them of each plot there are some similarities when observing the illusion and reality of each story. .
In the story "A&P," by John Updike, the main character Sammy makes the leap from an adolescent, knowing little more about life than what he has learned working at the local grocery store, into a man prepared for the rough road that lies ahead. As the story begins, Sammy is nineteen and has no real grasp for the fact that he is about to be living on his own working to support himself. Throughout the course of the story, he changes with a definite step into, first, a young man realizing that he must get out of the hole he is in and further into a man, who has a grasp on reality looking forward to starting his own family. Sammy whittles away his days looking at pretty girls and thinking about the ways of people. He hardly realizes that this is how he will spend his entire existence if he doesn't soon get out of this job. During this day that will prove to change his life, he makes the step towards his realization. He decides that he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life working at an A&P competing for the store manager's position. He is still just an adolescent who hasn't completely thought through his decision and yet his mind is made up. He quits his job using the girls merely as an excuse to get out. His final journey to manhood is a short one. He looks around for his girls and notices that they have already left, but he knew that was a futile cause to begin with.