Sammy remarks, “You know, it’s one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach, where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and quite another thing in the cool of the A&P, under the fluorescent lights, against all those stacked packages” (287). The girls cast aside when they entered the store. One can conclude that the girls knew that they were breaking social customs due to the assumption that the characters are aware of society’s rules. The
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
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.
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.
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).
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.
Different paths to coming of age The short story “A&P” by John Updike is about the coming of age of Sammy, a 19-year-old cashier at a mini mart near Boston. The short story “Jinx” by Aimee Bender is also about the coming of age of its protagonists, two 16-years-old teenagers. In both stories, the main characters mature. However, from a comparative standpoint the process in which the characters mature in each story is very different. While in A&P Sammy matures by choosing to become different, the girls on Jinx mature by simply growing older and having different interests which cause them to drift apart.
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.
One night one of her employees, a girl named Sheila makes a pass at Patti by telling her she loves Patti. Then she grabs Patti’s breast. Patti tells her she "doesn’t swing that way", but says that she loves Sheila, just not in the way Sheila loves her. After that incident, the narrator describes a party that he and Patti hold for all of Patti’s employees. The vitamin business was not doing as well as before so Patti holds a party to cheer all her employees up.
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.