A&P Analysis John Hoyer Updike’s short story “A&P” shows an eighteen-year-olds’ point of view of a 1960’s era grocery store. The dynamic protagonist, Sammy, explains the mundane lifestyles of the customers in the store based on his observations from the checkout counter. Suddenly the store is disrupted by three girls that enter the store wearing only bathing suits and defy the organization of the business. Sammy wants to change his cookie cutter lifestyle; after observing the girls, he realizes he does not have to conform to the social standards he was lead to believe. Sammy observes the patrons of A&P mundanely going about their shopping, like “sheep pushing their carts down the aisle” (6).
He seems to be surrounded by these characters bound to their boring lives. Sammy uses different names to describe the people he sees in his conformist town. He calls the customers in the store “sheep”, (Updike, 20) because of how blindly they follow their usual routine and “houseslaves”, (Updike, 20) are what he calls the house wives with pin curlers puttering around the store. He goes on to say that the customers are so enveloped in their grey lives that if someone were to set off a bomb in the center of the store that they would fail to even notice. One customer, “the witch”, (Updike, 18) as Sammy calls her, is described as a serious looking woman one who diligently watches the register he is on, eagerly waiting for him to slip up and make an error.
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. The reader gets a feeling of how mundane and dull the patrons of the A & P are on page 290 when Sammy states how “you could set off dynamite in an A & P and the people would by
Response Paper: A&P The short story, “A & P” by John Updike is a about a teenager named Sammy that works at a grocery store. In the story, three girls walk into the store in nothing but bathing suits and we follow Sammy’s reaction to the events that occur because of them. This story relates to my life because I also work at a grocery store. While I was reading this I felt like I could relate to many of the things that Sammy had to go through while he was working. The first thing that I related to from the story was the way that Sammy felt when he accidentally made a mistake with a customer’s order.
On June 2, 2006, an employee, working in the loss prevention department at the Shopko in Mason City, Iowa, was watching activity in the store on a camera system. She noticed a man, later identified as Troy Jorgensen, walking through the store fondling himself over his clothes. The employee contacted two fellow employees for assistance. The three employees observed Jorgensen follow a woman through the store while repeatedly exposing his genitals and masturbating. The woman may have seen Jorgensen's genitals, but she could not be located later and was never identified.
The short story is about an old fellow, who comes to the plum pudding store once a week. The problem is that the man does not buy any plum puddings, but he samples them. Therefore he gets the plum puddings for free and actually steals from the store (– definition as a thief). We see the story through the woman’s eyes, therefore the shop girl has the prejudice that the man is poor and cannot afford the product. Even though the man was neatly dressed, she still has the prejudice that he is poor.
In one supermarket, they placed a few beers on a top shelf in a cereal aisle and it sat unnoticed as shoppers picked up cereals around it. When asked after they checked out, every shopper stated that they were unaware of the beers that were there. It is vey important that items are placed correctly in a supermarket because the markets for beer drinkers are not going to be looking in the cereal aisle for beer. The film also illustrates a young teenager and a young woman that are very frequent shoppers. This young teenager is only thirteen years old and has the need to go shopping almost every weekend, and the young lady is grown but has an addiction to a specific designer named Chloe.
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.
Remaining silent against her heart’s desire to apologize, causes frustration and inner conflict. All this in the story “Marie” is lined with Gods messages forgiveness, quotes from the bible and a spirit of knowing you did wrong. (Holy Spirit). “Marie” in the story “lost in the city.” 86-years-old, she lives and survives in a town that is dangerous. Brave and strong, she defends herself from a street thug, and she strikes back when she is treated as a non-human by the clerks at the Social Security office.
Elizabeth Curley Mr. Flier Advanced Composition 16 October 2009 Bling Bling I was walking through the mall one afternoon shopping for new clothes. As I was coming out of Kohl's I walked right passed a group of guys. They were wearing oversized shirts, baggy jeans, and flat billed hats to the side. They also were wearing obnoxious jewelry that hung down to the middle of their waist. I walked past thinking of why someone would ever wear jewelry that is so painstakingly ugly.