Theme Of A & P By John Updike

Life is always about making important decisions that could change your life completely. Like the story A&P, Sammy made a huge decision to quit his job due to his boss being rude to three young girls wearing bathing suits. John Updike used several literary elements to make the story stand out and for people to relate to Sammy. The most important elements that is used in this story is setting, point of view, and characters.

“Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your Mom and Dad,” he tells me. It’s true, I don’t. But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it’s fatal not to go through with it (323). This statement made by Sammy after quitting his job, was made towards the end of John Updike’s story “A&P”. Sammy had quit his job, a job that his parents helped him to get. Sammy opened up a whole new world; a world that I don’t think Sammy was ready for. He made a quick and irrational decision, rather if it affected his life or not we would never know.

Updike's use of setting helps to contribute to the development of the theme of the story by making the reader understand the conformity of the society in which Sammy is yearning to escape. The story, “A&P”, takes place in the local A&P grocery store in the 1960s, a time in which it was abnormal to break free from the social norms of the

Everybody nowadays wear what they like to wear in public. They do not care about how other people think of their dress. Besides, it is people’s rights to dress themselves freely. However, in the story A&P, written by John Updike, people tend to be more conservative about dressing. The story happens in 1961 in a small town of northern Boston. At that time, people value conformity as their social norm. Main character Sammy works in A&P, and he despises people who act the same. One day, three girls come to the store, and they get insulted by manager Lengel because they just wear bathing suits. Sammy quits the job in A&P because he tries to defend for the girls. In fact, he is motivated by the girls to go against the social norm. After he witnesses

In "A&P" John Updike makes effective use of symbols to reveal Sammy’s thinking throughout this story. One of the symbols in this story is bathing suits. The story starts with the three girls just wearing their bathing suits walk into A&P. “In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits”(1). In fact, the bathing suits attract attention to the girls’ sexuality, which Sammy immediately remarks of. These attires are so different with the regular attire of the “sheep” and housewives who enter the store. The bathing suits the girls wear symbolizes the freedom that the girls show without regards the social rules of the small town. In spite of that, Sammy thinks that the girls’ attires are

Updike's "A & P" is rich in symbolism and begins in the very first paragraph. Sammy is eyeing the three bikini-clad girls who walk into his supermarket where he is a checker. His reverie is interrupted, however, by a "witch" whose "feathers" Sammy has to smooth. The older generation are typically symbolized in negative terms throughout the story, those women who cannot and will not understand youth.

John Updike presents significant items to represent certain points in the story like the girls bathing suits, the herring snacks, and the sheep. When the girls walk into the A&P, they caused a disruption mainly because of what they were wearing, bathing suits. During that time, women were expected to be fully clothed when entering a store or else they drew attention to their sexuality, which Sammy noticed quickly. As everyone reacted to their bathing suits it later represented a kind of freedom to Sammy. After Lengal body shames them saying, “Girls, I don't want to argue with you. After this come in here with your shoulders covered. It's our policy” (Updike 20), it crushed Sammy’s freedom feeling, so he reacted. Sammy also feels the contrast between the girls and the sheep as they try to purchase

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

As people age, maturity and wisdom is gained through every experiences. From the time a child turns eighteen and becomes an adult, they are required to deal with the realities of the real world and learn how to handle its responsibilities. In John Updike's short story, "A&P", the narrator Sammy, a young boy of nineteen, makes a major change to his life fueled by nothing more than his immaturity and desire to do what he wants and because of that, he has do deal with the consequences.

The short story “A & P” by John Updike is about a young man’s decision to stand up for others or, in the other characters’ opinions, make a foolish decision by abandoning his responsibility. At first he believes his decision is the right thing, quitting his job for how the girls were being treated. Then when he gets outside of the store, he realizes the world he just left behind, regrets his decision, and begins to question his actions. He starts to overthink what the world has to offer him, making his worldview change from underrating to overrating. His “unsure of the world’s dangers” worldview in the beginning changes to overrating the dangers of the future ahead at the end of the story causing Sammy to change throughout “A & P”.

John Updike’s ‘A&P’, is about a young man’s struggle with morality, authority, and freedom. Through a series of events Sammy witnessed injustice in his workplace leading him to quit his job. When Sammy quit his job he was taking a stand against authority because he longed for freedom from the A&P and his manager. Sammy made the leap from an adolescent, knowing little about life, into a man facing the consequences from his actions. John Updike’s use of language and actions reveal the internal struggles and relationships of a young man growing into adulthood.

In John Updikes A&P, choices and consequences are portrayed as a fundamental and recurring theme throughout the story. Many can understand the idea of repercussions for specific decisions and actions, which makes this story very relatable to most audiences. The story encompasses numerous ideologies paramount to human development and philosophy. Dismantling the story can help depict underlain meanings and asses the ambiguous nature of humanity. The construct of A&P portrays Sammy’s journey through the societal establishment of rules and order, ultimately exposing the chain reaction repercussion of making difficult choices. Though many characters make choices throughout the story, Sammy is obliged to make

Bentley, Greg W.. "Sammy's Erotic Experience: Subjectivity and Sexual Difference in John Updike's 'A & P'." Journal of the Short Story In English 43 (2004): 121-141. Gale Group. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.

On the surface, the hero of John Updike's much-anthologized short story "A&P" does not seem like a hero on the level of an Odysseus or a Hercules. Sammy is a cashier at a local grocery store. However, when three girls wearing bathing suits enter the A&P, Sammy begins to experience a call to action. For the first time in his life, he takes a stand when he feels as if the pretty girls are being treated with a lack of respect. Sammy feels the first stirrings of rebellion within him, as he chafes against the constraints of his life. Campbell divides the three parts of the hero's quest into a circular journey of departure, initiation, and return. Over the course of "A&P" Sammy makes his 'departure' into the world of the hero.

In a continuing attempt to reveal this societal conflict, Updike introduces the character of Lengel, the manager. He accosts the girls and starts to make a scene accusing them of being indecent: “‘Girls, I don’t want to argue with you. After this come in here with your shoulders covered. It’s our policy.’ He turns his back. That’s policy for you. Policy is what the kingpins want. What others want is juvenile delinquency” (Updike, 600). When the store manager confronts three girls in swimsuits because of their indecency (lack of proper clothes), they are forced to leave humiliated. At this moment Sammy makes the choice to quit his job in protest of the manager’s handling of the situation. In his mind, and arguably in John Updike’s mind, the standards of walking into a grocery store in a bathing suit and humiliating someone in front of other people are both unacceptable. This part of the story is pivotal for one main reason: a voice in the business community is speaking. As a manager at A & P, Lengel is the voice of The Establishment and guards the community ethics (Porter, 321). Queenie’s (the ringleader of the girls) blush is what moves Sammy to action. Here are three girls who came in from the beach to purchase only one thing, and this kingpin is embarrassing them in order to maintain an aura of morality, decency,