One might believe that the decision he made was selfish, and basically made for no apparent reason. His description of the three girls, the way that Sammy terminated his employment, and making decisions without thinking about his responsibilities are just a few of the reasons as to why Sammy is an immature, foolish, and impulsive young man. “My stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” (544) shows that Sammy does realize he made a stupid decision, but that he couldn’t do much since “Once you begin a gesture it’s fatal not to go through with it”
Sickness is replaced by the lettuce the man steals for his deteriorating wife. According to the narrations of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Rapunzel, “One day the wife stood at this window, looking down into the garden, and her eyes lit on a bed of the finest rapunzel, which is a kind of lettuce. . . Her craving for it grew from day to day, and she began to waste away because she knew she could never get any” (154).
As he rescan the item the women throws a fit and he thinks to himself "shes one of these cash regester watchers,a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrowes". The fact that he thought about her like that shows that he does not like to be yelled at. After sammy gets the woman calm and finish checking her out he goes right back to observing the three girls. This time around though he starts observing the secound girl, he seems more focused on all her flaws "with one of thoses chubby berry faces the lips all bunched together under her nose, with black hair that hadent quite frizzed right". sammy belives that she was the type of girl other girls think are striking but never realy could make 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. 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
Immaturity immediately kicks in as he refers to her as "a witch about fifty." The reader is able to tell that Sammy is unhappy at his job and does not care for the customers. He makes references to them as “The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle” (Updike 261) and “A few house slaves in pin curlers” (Updike 261). As the girls make their way to the register, with only a single jar of herring snacks, Sammy’s judgment kicks in again.
After being teased mercilessly, Elsie concocted a plan to fool the adults. 'Elsie got tired of the joking and one night suggested to me that she would copy the dancing figures of fairies from one of my most precious possessions, my Princess Mary's Gift book... 'That will shake them!' she said. 'They'll have to stop making fun of us then.'' The next time that the two girls were teased by their parents, Elsie challenged her father, telling him that if he lent them his camera, a Midg quarter plate, the two girls would try to take a photograph of one of the fairies.
Right from the very beginning the writer hooked me in with his vivid descriptions of wandering down side streets into the grocery store. After the entrance into the store I begin to partake in a journey; walking with a “childless, lonely old grubber” up and down the grocery isles asking questions. Just as much as Ginsberg placed me inside of his shoes, he also gave me a greater appreciation for Whitman by simply accompanying him on this short
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).
When the goblins learn that Lizzie does not plan to eat the fruit herself, they throw her money back at her and verbally and physically abuse her, pinching and kicking, tearing at her clothing, and smearing the juice and pulp of their fruit on her. Lizzie refuses to open her mouth and returns home with the penny in her purse. She invites her sister to suck the juices from her body, which Laura does. The juice of the goblin fruit now tastes bitter to Laura, and she wiggles in pain from having consumed it. But the cure works.
Even though the man was neatly dressed, she still has the prejudice that he is poor. The good girl The shop girl is very friendly and open-minded. Even though the girl knows what the man is up to she lets him come to the store each week, and actually asks him if he wants a spoon to sample the puddings. “Well, let him come if he wants it that bad” “Would you like to sample them, sir? Here is a spoon for you to use.” The girl lets the old man sample from the store.