Two stories are brought together "A&P" and "Gryphon" to represent the struggles each character faces. Sammy, the main character of "A&P", and Tommy, the main character of "Gryphon", face a fight that will test them. For Sammy the struggle is whether to stand up to his boss and defend the girls or let him go. Tommy faces conflict: does he believe the substitute teacher and defend her from everyone else or does he follow what everyone else does. In their stories, Tommy and Sammy are faced with a conflict they've never seen before, and their "job" is to decide what they should do and how to deal with the problem. These two stories, although written by two different authors, have similarities in the characteristics of the main character. Sammy and Tommy find themselves faced with adversity they've never faced before. Sammy must decide whether to stand up for the girls by quitting and be the hero or mind his own business and keep his job. Sammy is forced to quickly make a decision that his boss Lengel believes he made recklessly. “'I don't think you know what you're saying,' Lengel said” (Updike, p. 146). For Sammy, his decision is what he feels he should do and he never regrets his choice. Tommy finds himself facing adversities of a different kind, he must decide whether to believe the teacher and listen to what she says or whether, like the other children, to think she is strange and a liar. When she loses her job, Tommy is forced to make a decision, face the child who got her fired, or stay quiet and let the matter slide because it's not her problem. For both boys, their actions could be beneficial or could cause them future problems. An example, if Sammy... in the middle of the paper... fits into a dynamic character when he defends the teacher. Over the course of "A&P" and "Gryphon" the two characters found themselves facing a challenge they had never had to face before. Reading both stories showed that although there were different adversities depicted in the books, they both presented similar and very different challenges and reactions to each other. Sammy's was about a store called “A&P” where the manager confronted three girls in bathing suits and Sammy had to defend them. Tommy's was about a unique substitute teacher he really liked and his journey with her, and his sticking up for her in front of the other kids when one of the kids gets her fired. Together and separately, these two dynamic characters make up these unique stories that have ensnared the reader with their thoughts, adversities, and heroic actions throughout the story..