A&P Charecter Analysis

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In the short story A&P by John Updike we have Sammy a 19 year old teenager who is a checkout boy at an A&P grocery store. One Thursday summer day at work he sees three girls in nothing but bathing suites (Updike27). He being a male immediately analyzes each girl from their physical appearance, to the texture and patterns of their bathing suits, to the different margins of their tan lines. Many when reading this story may say he is a careless childlike young man, Ill mannered and immature for quitting his job. Many think that he was mesmerized and to impress these girls especially Queenie he decides to take their side and quit, but what many don’t realize that Sammy reasons for quitting runs much deeper then impressing three girls. He is a teenage boy who is still in search of himself in society and what he will become. Sammy has the four most important characteristics of success perseverance reaching for what you want, optimistic having the confident of one day getting to the future he dreams of , observant the ability to see things with every inch of details, and courage not being afraid to take the next step even if is yet not clear. Sammy is someone that strives for better things and working as a checkout boy is not cutting it for him. He is in a place where he can’t stand seeing himself in. At this point he lives paycheck to paycheck with a dead end job. This A&P store is no place for him. He does not see himself growing and is a place in which the usual shoppers are low class citizens. So this is defiantly not the place he feels he belongs in. Sammy has big dreams of one day being a member of a family in which the” Father” dresses up in coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a big plate and they were all holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in them(Updike 29). Sammy

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