Throughout John Updike`s short story "A & P" the protagonist Sammy, a young 19 year old male, is constantly judging the cliental who walks into the grocery store, A& P. For example, when three girls walk into the store with nothing but their bathing suits; Sammy’s mind begins to be very active when he is judging the girls. As Sammy watched Quennie “buzz” over to her friends, it made his stomach (and who knows what else) rubs the inside of his apron (Updike 2). Sammy also observed the women in the store turn away when they noticed the girls almost as if they knew what would happen and were ashamed for young girls (Updike 2). At which point, Sammy views all the older, less attractive shoppers as “sheep” pushing their carts around in a herd, or as “house slaves in pin curlers” (Updike 2). Through the choice of words by the author in these references from the book, the reader is led to believe that women were generally portrayed as passive individuals, known to stay at home, cook for their husbands and care for the children while the men were active at work.
Danielle Mireles Smith English 1302 Paper # 4 Point of View 28th February 2012 Word Count 750 “A & P” John Updike’s short story “A&P” takes place in 1961, in a small town in New England in a grocery store. Sammy the narrator is a grocery checker, he finds himself interested by a group of girls who walk in to the store. As they grocery shop Sammy observes the looks of the other customers comparing to the 3 girls. Sammy describes each girl in the story, the main girl “Queenie”, the second girl he described as chunky and the third girl was the tallest of the bunch. The girls were barefoot and wore their bathing suit, which is how they caught Sammy’s attention.
Characterization * 1. Sammy-(Dynamic) Sammy a teenage cashier, who develops an infatuation for the leader “Queenie” of a group of girls in bathing suits who enter the A&P Grocery store where he is employed. Sammy is infatuated with these girls as they enter the store to a point that he even messes up the shoppers ring-up. Sammy then, begins to notice even the smallest detail of each girl (She had sort of oaky hair that the sun and salt had bleached, done up in a bun that was unraveling, and a kind of prim face.) (Updike, 1961, p. 335)Sammy’s mixed emotions of lust and pride lead him to quit his job after the manager criticizes the girls about their choice of attire and their self-respect.
Ashley Green Kim Wolterbeek English 1B 01/30/15 Social Expectations In John Updike’s short story “A&P,” Sammy is a nineteen-year-old checkout clerk at an A&P store. The story starts when three girls in bathing suits enter the store and cause a commotion. The girls are watched intently by the other customers and upon checkout are confronted by Lengel, the store manager. Sammy welcomes the presence of the girls while Stokesie, another check clerk and Lengel are in shock. Sammy quits his job in protest to the girls’ treatment.
Sammy watches each of the girls as they look around the store, but there is one that catches his attention right as they walk in. He is so busy staring at her that he makes the customer he is "ringing up" very mad at him. Sammy describes the young girl as a "chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft - looking can with those two crescents of white just under it..."(Updike, 734). He notices everything about the girl, even down to the fact that she does not have a tan line, so she must have just bought the bright green, two piece bathing suit. He also notices that she is very conscience of being a little over weight, because she "…fumbled with the cookies, but on second thought she put the packages back"(Updike, 735).
Walmart seems to have its own laws and customs and the people who shop their on a regular basis appear almost primitive in their behavior as they go about raiding the store’s shelves and wrestling with fellow customers for discount flat screen televisions and bulk packages of two-ply toilet paper. These people embody not just America at its worst but the very irreparably flawed nature of the human race as a whole… And we can’t get enough of them! In this article, we’re going to be examining images of Walmart’s penny-pinching female shoppers at their
In the United States of America, who had “not met an Indian in Canada who has not suffered the humiliations of being overlooked (in jobs, in queues, in deserved recognition) and from being singled out (in hotels, department stores, on the streets, and at customs. (Mukherjee, Bharati, An Invisible Women.) In a department store an employee was racist towards a customer based on the customers skin color, and singled the customer out. The customer paid for the items, collected the bags and was about to leave the store when the blaring siren went off. Immediately the customer came to a stop and turned around.
Emily Nguyen Mrs. DiTallo L.A. per 5 5 April 2012 A&P Cause and Effect Essay The interesting short story “A&P” by John Updike is about a teenage boy named Sammy. The story starts, when three girls come in the store in only their bathing suits and Sammy notices them. Sammy then he starts to analyze them until they came to checkout their item until Lengel, the manager, starts an argument with the girls. Sammy, for a strange reason defended them and finally quit and going out to the parking lot to find the girls, which is nowhere to found. In “A&P”, the circumstantial causes intertwine with Sammy’s “choice” causes to create effects which speak directly to the story’s theme.
Lengel is the store manager and he is determined to let the girls know they are in the wrong for not dressing decently. Just as Lengel was scolding them Sammy was daydreaming about being in their living seeing their fathers in “Ice cream coats and bow-ties” and the women were wearing sandals eating snack while drinking
Name Changed Life In the “A&P” 19 year old Sammy who is a story all by himself is changed by three girls who enter his life as they walk in to shop at the local “A&P”. In which later on he decides to quit his job for these girls as a cashier at the local grocery store called the “A&P.” Realizing that he has made the decision to quit not only for himself, but the girls who inspired him not literally but figuratively quit to make what he seemed the right choice. In this short story, Sammy seems to have mixed opinions about these three girls who walk in. He sizes them up almost as they were all close friends and have known each other for years. Throughout the story, Sammy seems to become attached to these girls.