Persuasive/Argumentative A&P Throughout the short story of “A&P”, the main character Sammy makes a few decisions that reflect on him as a person. Sammy is a grocery clerks man who works the cash register at the store called the A&P. Physical attraction, going about quitting his job, and lack of responsibility shows just who he is. One might say he is nothing more than a foolish immature young man. To begin, the way Sammy describes the girls at the “A&P” shows just how immature he is. “With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light” (540).
Sammy observes the girls breaking the normal routine practiced by other shoppers. The initial sentence, “In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits” (1), sets the tone for the girls’ rebellious attitude. As if it was not enough to be wearing only bathing suit, one of the girls is so bold as to wear it with “the straps down” (4), so that not even the smallest piece of fabric covered her shoulders. Then “the girls were walking against the usual flow of traffic” (6) furthering the disorder they
By him saying things such as, “She just walked straight on slowly, on these long white prima-donna legs” (updike 260), suggests that he is not fully mature, but yet still a childish teenage boy at heart, focusing more on is attraction to girls then on his job. They are judged, without knowing, on every inch of their appearance if they are attractive or not. Sammy is so distracted by the girls, as a childish boy would be, that he rings up an elderly ladies crackers twice. She notices and immediately says something to him. Immaturity immediately kicks in as he refers to her as "a witch about fifty."
The boy is no longer young and naive; he has grown up and become disillusioned with life. Question 2 The description of the sound in the streets when the young man is walking by thinking of the girl he loves. He hears the "curses of laborers," the "shrill litanies of shop boys," and "nasal chartings of street singers." All of these images, besides just making the street seem busy, also make it seem like an unpleasant and intruding scene, almost like you would want to cover your ears and hurry through as fast as possible. This compliments perfectly the boy's imagination that he is "carrying his chalice safely through a throng of foes."
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.
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
Matthew Gullet Debbie Amburgey English II 9/10/12 Point of View Sammy is an immature 19 year old kid who hates his job as the A&P cashier. Sammy’s life is coming to a crossroad, little does he know, on the day that three half naked young girls walk in the grocery store. Sammy judges the customers, as well as his boss, and due to this his life would never be the same. The point of view in A&P is incredibly important because everything that happens in the story is told by Sammy the narrator. We get to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly about everyone, from Sammy’s perspective.
This story of a child’s corrupt choices and the heart wrenching emotions a mother feels, pulls the audience into their song. The song then shifts to a common situation of a young man having unprotected sex and eventually dies of HIV. TLC has the listener relating to a young man by arousing everyone’s need to be loved; the lyric is, “little precious has a natural obsession for temptation but he just can't see. She gives him loving that his body can't handle but all he can say is, baby it's good to me” (Waterfalls Lyrics). They stir the emotions of the listener in order to emphasis the need for safe sex.
The story has some bad examples, especially if you are a young reader. “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your Mom and Dad, (A&P, page 298)”. Here is an example of when Sammy quits because he saw the beautiful woman and now he wants to go hang out with them because he is fed up with his store manager. As a young reader, they might get the idea that Sammy did the right thing, while older readers will argue that the story provides teens with bad examples and thus may cause them to think like Sammy when they encounter such situations. A second example I would add is, “But remembering how he made that pretty girl blush makes me so scrunchy inside (A&P, page 298)”.
They too can be used in excess and can lead to severe health problems. On the silver screen you can see rail thin actresses, that society has come to see as the precipice of true beauty. Society has become so close minded that as a whole it views the characteristics they have as the only ones that can be called beautiful (A Unique Take on Beauty). Seeing these women so often distorts the perspective on what is a normal body type. The truth is not everyone is going to be stick skinny with blonde hair and blue eyes and that is a good thing.