The author, John Updike who has lived the life of a teenage boy as made his main character and narrator a teenage boy of eighteen. Reading the story is like reading the dirty and perverted thoughts of Sammy as the girls walk into A & P. Sammy is very judgmental towards the girls as he describes one of the girls as “very ‘striking’ and ‘attractive’ but never quite makes it” (557). He makes stereotypes about the three girls the way that men talk about girls, especially when it comes to intelligence. Sammy for example makes a comment about them thinking to himself “do you really think it’s a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?” (557). If this story was written by a woman, the story would be completely different in many
Sammy, the narrator of and cashier at A&P, is an opinionated, cynical, typical teenage boy with an obvious physical attraction to the opposite sex. Sammy is aware of everything around him and seems to have everybody figured out. From, according to Sammy, the witch-like customer whom he’s ringing up at the time he catches a glimpse of the three half-naked girls, to his coworker and manager. Sammy’s imperfections and narrow-mindedness are revealed by his particular observations. For example, the hanging bathing suit straps of one of the girls and the precise tan line boundaries of the other.
He seems to be surrounded by these characters bound to their boring lives. Sammy uses different names to describe the people he sees in his conformist town. He calls the customers in the store “sheep”, (Updike, 20) because of how blindly they follow their usual routine and “houseslaves”, (Updike, 20) are what he calls the house wives with pin curlers puttering around the store. He goes on to say that the customers are so enveloped in their grey lives that if someone were to set off a bomb in the center of the store that they would fail to even notice. One customer, “the witch”, (Updike, 18) as Sammy calls her, is described as a serious looking woman one who diligently watches the register he is on, eagerly waiting for him to slip up and make an error.
In the early 1960’s, men and women of all ages drifted away from the conformity surrounding the centuries before them, men by growing their hair long and wearing new styles of clothing, and women by largely increasing the amount of skin they bore. John Updike’s short story, “A&P,” recounts the actions and thoughts of Sammy, a nineteen year old cashier at the A&P, who has not yet become accustomed to this change. When three girls walk into A&P, Sammy reveals his sexist, childish nature and urge to be genuine in his acts. Despite the fact that Sammy rarely speaks throughout the story, his sexist thoughts, conveyed through first person narration, speak volumes about his character, or rather, lack thereof. Women shopping at the A&P are not referred to as customers.
In the short story “A&P” by John Updike, check out boy Sammy stands up for the “mistreatment” of girls dressed in bikinis who came into the grocery store that he worked at. While practically drooling at the girls as they walked through the aisles, his mind had essentially put them on a silver platter. When his boss told the girls to not come back without some proper clothes on, Sammy quits his job saying to his manager, “You didn’t have to embarrass them.” Sammy’s abrupt decision to quit showed how much he was caught up with the girls, of whom he didn’t even know. After handing back his apron, he ran outside expecting to see the girls waiting for him in order to thank him for standing up for them. Obviously when he got outside, they were long gone.
Gray 1 Jacob Gray Professor Copeland English 102 (3pm class) 9/18/12 The Use of Initiation in A&P As men we all experience a desire to impress or catch the eye of that one significant other. In Updike's short story, “A&P”, temptation and desire consume Sammy; once he lays his eyes on the young woman that arrives at his store. But, out of the three girls there was one in particular which caught his attention. Is it at that moment Sammy experiences his initiation into adulthood, or, is it just lust running through the mind of your average nineteen year old? Either way, it's not everyday one has the opportunity to get the girl of his dreams, or at least in Sammy's case make a good impression.
In The A and P by John Updike, irony is very apparent throughout the actions of the main character. Sammy, the main character takes a stand for what he believes is right and expects a positive outcome but is surprised when his good deed goes unnoticed. From the beginning he puts one of the incoming teenage girls on a pedestal. From her actions and the way she presents herself in the grocery store with only a bathing suit on, he views her as the “queen bee” of her group of friends. The “leader” of the group of teenage girls is dubbed “queenie” by Sammy from the beginning.
Remy Mermelstein March 25, 2014 English 9 Honors/K. O’Connor Period 4 A&P/Brain Essay Remy Mermelstein - March 2014 In John Updikes short story, A&P, the impulsive and rebellious behavior of Sammy and the girls is highlighted in relation to the logical and more socially un-awkward adults. A normal day at an A&P is punctured by the rash and unexpected decisions of teenagers in a sort of coming of age story of a boy [Sammy] realizing his stance in the world working in an A&P in the middle of nowhere, with no sign of a really good future while he admires three girls who to him seem to be way out. Three girls walk into the A&P, wearing nothing but bathing suits in a place far from any water or beach and immediately captivated nearly everyone in sight. The girl’s decision to walk into a public store in bikinis suggests that they really do not care what other people think about them, almost as if they are at the top of the
In A&P, it's obvious Sammy tries to impress the prettiest girl that walked in with her bathing suits along with her friends, whom he named "Queenie". As these girls walk in, the music changes and you see Sammy's attention turn to them and he forgot about the "witch" for a second and rings her "hose" twice. This shows he has an interest in her and will want to impress her and get her attention. He tried impressing her by quitting his job. He tells Lengal, "I said I quit".
Kaylyn Graham Mr. Winter English 1302 – DC019 30 January, 2013 Sammy is a young boy who is easily attracted to the opposite sex, very judgmental, and then realizing the consequence of failure in the real world. Character Analysis Sammy, the narrator in “A&P” by John Updike is a young boy, who works in a convenient store and notices the three girls that walk in. He then starts to become mesmerized with the girls and then starts to describe their physical appearance, from the texture and patterns of their bathing suits, and their actions. Sammy is so distracted by the girls that he is not paying any attention to what he is doing such as he is checking out a lady as he tells us a “cash-register-watchers,” and she has yet to see anything done wrong. As the girls walked up and down the aisles and each girl that he sees he starts to point out the flaws of each one of them mainly about Queenie when he states that she was a “queen” and that “she kind of led them”(a&p), as if they were a clique.