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.
Sammy’s Rite of Passage Sammy is the protagonist of John Updike’s “A&P.” The title of the story is important because it gives us the context of the narrative. Sammy is a nineteen-year-old boy working the checkout line at an A&P in a small New England town. When three girls come into the store, wearing only bathing suits and are antagonized by the store manager Lengel, Sammy quits his job, hoping to impress them, and is then filled with regret about the future. Sammy is a very dynamic character that transforms from an adolescent into an adult at the end of the story by standing up for his beliefs, taking responsibility for his actions, and learning that life is tough. At the conflict of the story, Sammy stands up for his beliefs when he quits his job.
In the first portion of the story, Updike portrays Sammy’s innocence. To start, the fact that he is a boy named Sammy who works in a local grocery store sets an image in the reader’s mind. At work he acts like a kid. This is seen when he comments on the three girls with his co-worker Strokesie. Updike writes, ‘Oh daddy,’ Strokesie said beside me.
In “A&P”, the circumstantial causes intertwine with Sammy’s “choice” causes to create effects which speak directly to the story’s theme. In this short story the circumstantial causes are no the most important causes to the story but show to have some short- term effect. One cause was just when the three girls walked into the store in only their bathing suits. For this reason, it caused to affect Sammy off his work and to watch the girls. Another cause was when Lengel, the manager, saw the girls while they were checking out.
Wolf, her son, preferred dishes that Dorothy had not heard of until she was an adult, with no interest at all in gravy. She took it to heart, that he did not like gravy, but she was proud that he never had to go to bed hungry as she once did. For a holiday feast, Dorothy prepared a roast duck and with the cracklings at the bottom of the pan, she made the most wonderful gravy. When Wolf came to the kitchen to help carry dishes to the table, the lingering smell of the gravy stopped him in his tracks. Dorothy gave him a taste of the her home made gravy to which, this time he approved.
Sammy quits his job in protest to the girls’ treatment. Sammy has the approval of his parents at risk while Lengel has his managing position to lose. Independent of their various backgrounds, all the characters in tare to some extent influenced by social expectations. Updike’s A&P suggests that the more individuals have to lose, the more strictly individuals adhere to them; therefore, one can infer the more power one has the more one is likely to be bound by social expectations. Three girls who enter the A&P who enter the A&P wearing bathing suits, are least bound by social expectations.
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
Stanley Cox was a man who lived his life being illiterate until he was middle-aged. His hard work, adaptability and confidence is what led him to his own life’s success. To be hard working is to be determined and to persevere. It is to look at a situation and rather then look at it as an obstacle without trying, look at it as a challenge worth accepting. Cox managed to support himself and his father by maintaining a job in a Cafeteria as a baker.
When the narrator is in the middle of his routine, he sees the boy, standing at a liquor store. The narrator then asked the kid, if he wanted to come with him. The kid followed him to his home, there they sad just looking at words of wisdom from wisdoms cookies that the narrator has collected every time he got a cookie. The kid is very interested in the cookies, and they look at them most of the night. At the end of the night the narrator, yells at the kid, but not in a mean or mad tone, a motivating tone to encourage the kid, to feel that he is special.
He was so stressed out about the money that he needed for school that he asked to go to the local grocery store and help carry groceries to cars. In A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry Symbolism is shown in the drama by the way Ruth supports Walter on his dream liquor store. She supports him by telling him to “eat your eggs” every morning. Ruth’s support is not the support Walter Lee wants. Her support is in a nonverbal way it is a nourishment way.