Analysis Of ' A & P '

John Updike's "A&P" is about a boy named Sammy, who lives a simple life while working in a supermarket he seems to despise. As he is following his daily routine, three girls in bathing suits enter the store. The girls affect everyone's monotonous lives, especially Sammy's. Because the girls disrupt the routines of the store, Sammy becomes aware of his life and decides to change himself.

This story could make one wonder, how far would you go to get the person of your dreams. Three young ladies walk into the A&P store wearing nothing but bathing suits. The girls catch the attention of Sammy who is the cashier. Sammy watches the girls walk around the store while making mental notes about each one of the girls. When Mr. Lengel the store manager sees the girls, he lets them know that the store policy is to have your shoulders covered and to dress appropriately when you enter the store. This conversation upsets Sammy, so in the moment Sammy spontaneously quits his job in hopes of being the girl’s hero. After Sammy takes off his apron and walks out the door he looks around, but the girls have already gone. Within John Updike’s short story “A&P” the author uses foreshadowing, a dynamic character, and symbolism to show us how life can be unpredictable at times.

A&P is the story of a nineteen-year-old boy, Sammy, who is fighting against the expectation to blindly accept the social norms of society and follow the dull, routine life set before him. Sammy currently works as a cashier at the local A&P supermarket and describes the customers shopping within A&P as sheep, houseslaves and pigs being loaded into a chute. He yearns to be something more than a chain climbing employee like his co-worker, Stokesie, or his boss, Lengel, who haggles over cabbages and hides in the manager’s office all day.

John Updike's story "A&P" talks about a 19-year old lad, Sammy, who has a job at the local grocery store, the A&P. Sammy works at the register in the store and is always observing the people who walk in and out each day. On this particular day that the story takes place, Sammy is caught off guard when a cluster of girls walk into the store wearing just their bathing suits. This caught Sammy's attention because the nearest beach is five miles away and he could not figure out why they would still be in their suits. Sammy continues to overlook the girls in the store throughout their endeavor to pick up some item's that they were sent in for. While they are wandering around the store Sammy watches the reactions of other customers, is yelled at

The short story “A&P” written by John Updike, is about three girls who change Sammy’s life. The three girls came from the beach and are not dressed properly to enter a grocery store called A&P. Sammy, the main character, is a check out clerk, and observes every detail about the girls. Sam even gives each of the girls a name. His favorite is “Queenie.” Sammy is obviously the type of guy who doesn’t get a lot of girls. Sam has a conflict of person vs. society. Because of his dead end job, obsession with Queenie, and his noble act to save the girls from embarrassment, Sammy has a conflict between himself and society.

The short story, “A&P”, by John Updike, gives readers a glance at the life of a teenage boy, Sammy, who makes a rash decision after encountering three girls at the local grocery store. The theme of “A&P” is that desire for a new life can be dangerous when it provokes irrational action. Updike effortlessly conveys this theme through his use of setting, characterization, and symbolism throughout the short story.

In John Updike’s coming of age story “A&P,” the protagonist Sammy sees what he believes to be an unfair act to three teenage girls in bikini in the grocery store. He makes an immature decision and quits in front of his manager that decided to address the girls about their clothing choice in front of the entire grocery store, instead of talking to them in private. Unfortunately, the teenage girls do not notice Sammy’s heroic act, and he is left alone in the parking lot to face the repercussions of his childish actions. John Updike chooses to write in first-person, so the reader gets to know the narrator’s real character. In his short story “A&P,” John Updike demonstrates that Sammy is an immature character immaturity from his disrespectful personality, judgmental attitude, and misogynist beliefs.

A&P is described to be, “...five miles from a beach...but we’re right in the middle of town...north of Boston…” (Updike 19). Sammy’s description of the A&P present the setting as an ugly and boring place to be in. The fluorescent light is as cool as the “checkerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor”(Updike 19). The everyday grocery shoppers move in the same direction except for the girls in the swim suits, for they move against everyone else, and everything is organized into perfection along the tidy aisles. This degrading routine in this establishment is implied by Sammy’s careless reference to the usual shoppers as “sheep,” “houseslaves,” and “pigs” (Updike 18). These frequent customers seem to walk the store in oblivion to everything else around them; as Sammy points out, “I bet you could set off dynamite in an A&P and the people would by and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists…” (Updike 18).

There is an apparent biased view against women in the short story “A+P” by John Updike. Society is male-dominated and women are discriminated against, whether they know it or not. Such a restrictive culture and societal views are indicated by the inner thoughts of the narrator, Sammy, who is the clerk at the supermarket. The interactions of three girls with the rest of the townspeople are documented in Sammy’s mind. Sammy’s descriptions of people, the dialect of the characters, and the actions that are noted converge to reveal the nature of the time and place of the A+P supermarket.

John Updike, one of the most forward-thinking and socially provocative writers of the 50s and 60s, is known for his “incisive presentation of the quandaries of contemporary personal and social life.” (Lawn 529) Updike graduated from Harvard University and wrote for one of the more cutting edge publications like The New Yorker- both are notoriously ahead of their time and harbor controversial ideas. In his short story “A&P”, Updike reveals a young man named Sammy in a society on the brink of a social revolution- one in which a group of girls and an innocent cashier will unknowingly lead. Updike, through symbolism and syntax, shows how the girls are leading the revolution, how Sammy is feeling the wrath of this revolution, and

In “A&P”, John Updike uses compelling diction, language, and description to enhance the perspective of Sammy within the story and his final decision to quit his job. The use of imagery within the supermarket develops the environment Sammy worked in to a greater extent and painted diverse pictures of the customers. The derogatory descriptions of Lengel and some customers was also significant in terms of revealing Sammy’s emotions about his job at A&P. The nature of the situation with the girls and descriptive language of the customers and environment were also significant factors.A spontaneous effort to portray Sammy’s power and independence was a significant aspect Updike made more interesting by implementing dialogue, diction, and theme.

In the story A&P by John Updike a young cashier by the name of Sammy learns about the power of desire and the mystery of others minds when working at an A&P supermarket in a small town north of Boston in the 1960’s, where there was a lot of social norms and many people didn’t step out of them. The young nineteen-year-old Sammy wasn’t expecting his Thursday shift at A&P to go the way it did when income three young girls but, these are not your socially normal teenagers who come walking in the door. The moment these girls walk into the A&P they attract every male eye in the store towards them, which clearly shows the kind of power their sexuality grants them over their opposite sex. In turn, Sammy imagination and interpretation of these

In the short story A&P by John Updike, the story is told in a first person narrative of a teenage boy working as a cashier in an A&P grocery store on a hot summer day. The story begins with the teenage boy named Sammy becoming preoccupied by a group of three teenage girls that walk into the grocery store wearing bathing suits. Sammy admires the girl's beauty as most nineteen year old adolescent boys would, in a slightly lewd and immature nature. His grammar is flawed and he is clearly not of an upper-class family, his

Throughout the short story A&P, written by John Updike, the reader is given the challenge of determining the ages of the three girls that enter the supermarket who are barely dressed, wearing nothing but a swimsuit. One of the store workers, Sammy, shows interest in these girls and strives to be their “hero”. The ultimate question that is never answered in the story is: Are the girls just young and plain naive? Or are they older and aware of what they are doing? Using the symbols Updike has given throughout the story, I expect the girls to be young and naive. By his use of symbolism, Updike suggests that the line between youth versus adulthood is the main source of tension throughout his story.

There are many ways to analyze a literary work. These ways are called Schools of Criticism or Critical Theories. Schools of criticism occur when groups of readers and critics come together and declare allegiance to a similar core of beliefs. And, when they do, they ask a particular set of question about a literary work. Each different way of analyzing a literary work elicits a different set of questions.