They set out supplies, and Skeetah decides that they need more food, so he shoots a squirrel with his BB gun. Randall refuses to clean the squirrel, so Skeetah does, but he accidentally nips the intestines. The smell forces Esch into the bushes to vomit. While the meat is cooking, Marquise, Big Henry, and Manny arrive. Esch comments that Skeetah never named the puppy, so he tells her to give it a name.
Sammy observes the patrons of A&P mundanely going about their shopping, like “sheep pushing their carts down the aisle” (6). He continues to belittle the customers by stating, “I bet you could set off dynamite in an A&P and the people would by and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists” (6), as if they are not thinking about what they are doing because they have done it so many times before. The narrator explains the dullness of the store by pointing out the “fluorescent lights” and “checkerboard green-and cream rubber-tile floor” (7). Finally, Sammy states, “The store’s pretty empty, it being a Thursday afternoon, so there was nothing much to do” (12), indicating everyone works a typical nine-to-five shift and only older, retired people are at the store on a Thursday afternoon. Sammy observes the girls breaking the normal routine practiced by other shoppers.
Soon his anger takes the best of him, “you’ve had a fair warning now,” I yelled at him. I’m enraged now” (139). His existential beliefs are pushing him to attack the goat without reason, “I tip up a boulder, and let it fall thundering down at him” (139). The goat notices Grendel the entire encounter and completely ignores him. It climbs the cliff instinctively, attempting to dodge Grendel’s attacks, “he keeps on climbing, mindless, mechanical, because it is the business of goats to climb” (140).
He considers carrying things through the streets undignified, and refuses to do it himself. On Christmas morning, Malachy and Frank attend Mass with their father and go to collect leftover coal strewn over the Dock Road so that their mother can cook the pig’s head. Pa Keating meets the boys on the street and convinces the landlord of South’s pub to give them a bag of real coal. They drag the coal home through the rain, passing cozy houses. Children laugh at them from inside the houses, taunting them and calling them “Zulus” because they are smeared with black coal.
The Joads leave the government camp early the next morning. While fixing a flat tire on the truck, a well-dressed man offers them work as peach pickers. When they arrive at the Hooper Ranch, policemen escort them through wire gates. Angry, shouting people surround the entrance. Inside the gates, the Joads are registered and begin picking fruit for five cents a box.
Dill’s imagination is wild as well. He tells enormous lies and conducts unlikely stories; he often tries to be some thing he isn’t. “ Having been bound in chains and left to die in the basement by his new father, who disliked him, and secretly kept alive on raw field peas by a passing farmer who heard his cries for help, Dill worked himself free by pulling the chains from the wall. Still in wrist manacles, he wandered two miles out of Meridian where he discovered a small animal show and was immediately engaged to wash the camel. He traveled with the show all over Mississippi until his infallible sense of direction told him he was in Abbott County, Alabama, just across the river from Maycomb.
Next morning when Jim finds out that Alena is an extremist vegetarian, he does not hesitate to lie about being a vegetarian also. The author uses verbal irony to show his desire to identify with her. “I don’t eat meat myself, […] or actually, not anymore’ – since the pastrami sandwich, that is- […]” (Boyle 573). Jim surprises not only the reader, but also himself when he finds himself marching down the street with a placard and even later gets knocked out by a former kick boxer chauffeur. Jim’s actions are exactly the opposite with what the reader is led to expect from the description of Jim and his fondness of meat.
Immaturity immediately kicks in as he refers to her as "a witch about fifty." The reader is able to tell that Sammy is unhappy at his job and does not care for the customers. He makes references to them as “The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle” (Updike 261) and “A few house slaves in pin curlers” (Updike 261). As the girls make their way to the register, with only a single jar of herring snacks, Sammy’s judgment kicks in again.
The depiction of the characters of the mayor and townspeople exhibits a most chaotic town full of disorder and its main cause - the residents’ selfishness and indifference for each other. When the mayor heard about the intentions of the brothers and found them at a meat store, all he did was stopping them from killing Santiago. He did not interrogate them on their intention and by stating to Clotilde Armenta ‘No one is arrested just on suspicion. Now it’s a matter of warning Santiago Nasar, and happy new year.’(p 57), he revealed his lack of concern for the man in jeopardy and the laws of the town. The reason behind his nonchalant reaction to something so serious was fairly unclear.
Here is a spoon for you to use.” The girl lets the old man sample from the store. And later she wants to buy him a pudding; it would give her such pleasure. The man samples not just one The man samples every pudding in the store, but he never buys anything, and he has done it for years. He says he is never satisfied with the plum puddings therefore he gets to sample the next one. (E.g.)