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
Given that it is the 1960’s the idea of girls strolling around in bathing suits in public is out of the ordinary. The climax occurs after the three girls are paying at Sammy’s till when Mr. Lengel, Sammy’s boss, says to the three girls “Girls, this isn’t a beach.” (Updike, 1961). After a discrepancy
The imagery used by both authors display how they view life at their point in time. In both of these writings the point of view is from an employee who works in the store observing the patrons who visit there. In “A&P” Updike sets the scene by the clerk, Sammy, in the third check out slot who is captivated by three young ladies who enter the store in merely bathing suits. The clerks can usually make assumptions of their life based on the products they purchase and they way they do it. Sammy watches these three girls and gives them labels of to what role each plays, from “the queen” who “kind of led them” to “the kind of girl other girls think is very ‘striking’ and ‘attractive’ but never quite makes it” and “the chunky one” (page 289) by the way they walk around the supermarket.
When Evyn first saw Eleni, with her red lipstick, black pants, and high heels, she thought Eleni looked nothing like a college professor and a mother. Evyn made the assumption that she went partying every night. That is an example of her being judgemental. After her father, Birdie, reminded Evyn that her new combination lock was 5, 10, 15; she forgot, making her forgetful. An example of Evyn being unintelligent was when her so-called friends, Andrea’s group, calls her Evelyn and doesn’t talk to her unless it’s to ask about updates with Ajax, she doesn’t realize that they’re just using her.
Gender Roles In Society Though girls and boys are known to specific “boundaries,” they should not be expected to act completely different from one another. Society puts down females day by day just because they don’t “act like girls.” But what really does it mean to “act like a girl?” Every person, regardless of gender, is a representative of the human race. So, should girls of today be ignored, held to implausible standards, and forced to deny their true personalities? Girls are often ignored and treated differently than guys. In Chapter 5 of Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout reflects on her summer and how she spent the majority of it without her brother Jem and their friend Dill.
3) The negative opinions the two main characters share about these people are important in that they create an immediate contrast between them and the bringers of change. It is this contrast that magnifies the large reversal of perception for the two main characters at the end of the stories. The Catalyst for change are unexpected by Sammy and the husband. When the girl’s arrive in A&P, Sammy reveals his surprise at the girls demeanor, “You know, it’s one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach…but another thing in the cool of the A&P.” (A&P Par. 13) He then describes the usual patrons of the A&P as “women with six children and
As the three girls walk into the A&P wearing bikinis, an act that was certainly unacceptable for the story’s time period (most likely the 1960s), these girls are doing this strictly for shock value. In paragraph two, the persona of the girls is introduced by the narrator, Sammy: “You never know for sure how girls’ minds work but you got the idea she had talked the other two into coming in here with her, and now she was showing them how to do it, walk slow and hold yourself straight” (Updike 418). As Sammy describes how he believes that the third girl, “Queenie”, is the instigator, he also degrades the girls by claiming that one can never figure out how a girl’s mind truly works. It is with Sammy’s
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.
Feminist approach response: As reading the story, and remembering the video we watched in class about this story it gets me thinking that woman that were portrayed in this short story were portrayed as some kind of prostitutes, it’s clearly visible, especially in the video that we watched. “You know, its one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down the beach, where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and another thing in the cool of the A & P, under the fluorescent lights, against all those stacked packages, with her feet paddling along naked over our checkboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor”. (A&P, page 296). Sammy here explains that when the girls where inside the store, all the focus was on them, especially the way they were dressed. Sammy spaced out and imagined meeting her at her party which is another reason to say that those girls were portrayed as eye
“We are told that Britney Spears swam topless with her former assistant, that she ran crazed into a beauty salon and demanded to have her head shaved, and that she feeds her two children ice cream and Doritos” (Hirschorn). Feeding children Doritos and ice cream has nothing to do with how well she performs and sings. Britney’s decisions were by no means justified but she should not be suffering for her past. She realized what she had done and started to turn her life back around. Spears divorced Kevin Federline, her back up dancer, and started to devote her life back to her children and producing music for her new album ‘Femme Fatale’.