"By the time the girls teached the check-out, Sammy was half way in love with one of them"(Peck 4).Sammy likes one of the girls who walked into the store. "I said, "darling, hold me tight"(Updike 2). Sammy is talking to himself, pretending to speak to the girl.Another charector in this story is Lengel, the middle-aged store manager and local sunday school teacher. "Lengel, the officious supermarket manager notices and repremands the girls for their dress"(Peck
In a small town everything is familiar and often taken for granted. In John Updike’s short story “A&P” the main character Sammy discovers a beautiful girl unlike anything he has ever seen before, in the small town. The magnificent girl, who he calls “Queenie” stuns him so much that he quits his job in her defense. The difference in Sammy and Queenie are that their mature level is different, while the difference in Sammy and Lendle is their view on the way girls should dress, and lastly how Sammy stands up for the girls and they don’t notice. Character can be defined as the combination of qualities or features that distinguishes one person, group, or thing from another.
When the store manager approaches Sammy’s lane, he felt this was his big chance to impress queenie. The store manager visit Sammy’s lane and the first thing he says "Girls, this isn’t the beach," (Updike). Queenie responds to the store manager “lengel” that her mother sent her to buy her some groceries. However, queenie felt that since her mother sent her it is okay coming to the store with a bathing suit on. While Lengel and Queenie are arguing, Sammy pictures himself hanging out with her.
You have to learn how to handle situations in an orderly manner and approach at the right time and place. In the story, it started off with you being at the checkout looking at the three girls in bathing suits who walked in the store. You were too busy worrying about the girls and how they looked that you were not focused on your job. You actually tried to blame an old woman for your problems. When you are working in an environment like that, it is easy for you to get distracted from your duties.
In John Updike’s “A&P”, standing up for what he believed was right was all it took for Sammy to become an adult. As Sammy rang up the purchases of the everyday “sheep” (79) and “house-slaves” (79), he notices the “three girls in nothing but bathing suits” (77) that had come in. Like most hormonal, teenage boys would, he watched the pretty girls as they walked throughout the store, especially “Queenie” (79), who appeared to be the leader of the girls. He began to feel bad for them though when he realized his male coworkers were also “sizing up their joints” (79). After all, “they couldn’t help it” (79).
This can be done because of the amount of power the United States has over the other countries, and is a great example of how others use power, as well. John Updike’s “A & P” has a plotline that is focused around power. There are normal, every-day events that happen, like the cash-register-watcher that gives Sammy a hard time because he rang up her HiHo crackers twice, but the reason this specific day in the story was so important is the three teenage girls who walked into the store wearing nothing but their bathing suits. These girls walking into a conservative supermarket such as A & P shows not only a sign of rebellion, but shows a battle for power. Power and rebellion are concepts that pair very well, in that you cannot have rebellion without having someone in power who is making rules, or without someone who is powerful enough to challenge those rules.
He seems to talk down to the women during the entire story. He then looked inside the cupboard in the kitchen and says, “Here’s a fine mess” (Glaspell 256). This is another form of talking down to women, meaning the kitchen is the women’s place and it should be kept tidy. He also comments on all the hard work Minnie put into her preserves and says, “…she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about” (256). The county attorney’s opinion is that women are just simple, trivial people that are used to worrying over “trifles” (256).
Though it takes place over the period of a few minutes, it represents a much larger process of maturation. From the time the girls enter the store to the moment they leave, you can see changes in Sammy. He goes from focusing on how beautiful the girls look to admiring them for being so different from his everyday boring customers (Thompson). After seeing this, he starts to feel bad about how others view the girls: “All that was left for us to see was old McMahon patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints. Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldn’t help it” (Updike).
In the beginning of the story, the protagonist (Sammy) was at his cashier as usual when the antagonists (the Queenie and the girls) walk into A & P grocery store in their bathing suits and changed Sammy’s life forever. The exposition of this story starts when the girls walk in with only their bathing suits and start to shop in the grocery store that is in the middle of town. The story takes place back when people still had a bit of innocence and morals. So for these girls to walk into a grocery store in their bathing suits in town was kind of disrespectful. As the girls are walking around the store, Sammy starts to observe them whenever he could see them from out of the isles.
For example, this could be single mother, youth, asylum seekers, etc. “More moral panics will be generated and other, as yet nameless, folk devils will be created. This is because our society as present structured will continue to generate problems for some of its members, and the condemn whatever solution these groups find” (Conhen 1987:204). That’s mean moral panics are still generating by today’s folk devil. This folk devil could influence to the youth culture, values, attitudes and behavior in the society.