The stories in this Lesson Plan span thirty years of Updike's career and display the way in which he matured and evolved as a writer. All of these stories were first published in The New Yorker magazine and later included in short story collections.
Updike's earlier stories, "Ace in the Hole," "A & P," and "Pigeon Feathers," contain the common thread of a young, male protagonist wrestling with his place in the world. For Ace Anderson ("Ace in the Hole"), this means reckoning with his drab current life as a jobless husband and father in light of his glamorous history as a high school basketball star. For Sammy ("A & P"), this means confronting the omnipresent consumerism of American...
