It is important to realize that nineteen-year-old Sammy's representation of his surroundings may be distorted, but the story still maintains the basic use of this setting by Updike. Updike chooses the boring setting of an A&P grocery store as his symbol, a microcosmic example of society's tendency to conform. Additionally, readers can easily identify with a grocery store. This A&P resides in a city where "women generally wear a t-shirt, shorts or something similar before getting out of the car on the street," Sammy explains. Seeing a girl walking around wearing only a bikini in such a public place seems scandalous. “If you stand at our door you can see two banks, the Congregational Church and the newsstand…” The town is conventional. Updike transforms this familiar and mundane piece of American life and makes it extraordinary. William Faulkner writes “A Rose for Emily” in the first person, but this first-person narrative is very different from Updike's Sammy. The narrator of “A Rose for Emily is unknown throughout the story, but he speaks for the entire town; in a sense it creates a cumulative voice. By using the perspective of the town's people, Updike creates a mysterious and suspenseful tone. When Emily buys some rat poison, the townspeople can only speculate as to why. “So the next day we all said, 'He's going to kill himself'; and we said that would be the best thing.” Updike uses Emily Tell the story from this point of view