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characterization of sammy in john updike's a & p
protagonist sammy in updike's a&p criticism
protagonist sammy in updike's a&p criticism
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Sammy in A&P by John Updike Is where you are in your working career where you want to be for the rest of your life? The answer to that question is simple for Sammy in the story “A&P” by John Updike. Sammy, like many others in this world, is a young man trying to make some money in a small town. But unlike some, he refuses to be stuck in the same job for many years or possibly the rest of his life. One day while working the register at a local grocery store, Sammy notices three girls walk in. The girls are wearing their bathing suits because the beach is close to the store. When the girls reach the register the manager notices the girls attire. He walks over to them and argues with them for a moment and then girls leave. Sammy didn’t understand why the manager had such a problem with what the girls were wearing. Suddenly Sammy decides to quit. He takes off his apron and walks out the door. One of the things that caught my attention the most was Updike’s use of imagery in describing Sammy’s working environment. “The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle-”(34), I thou...
Sammy is a product of his generation. In the 1960s the social climate was changing. The new ideas of the youth were taking over the traditions of their parents. Music and the drug culture began to change the perspective as more people were listening to rock and roll music and experimenting with mind-altering drugs in an effort to free themselves from the strict societal demands of the 1950s. Sammy demonstrates this as he describes his work uniform - the bow tie and apron. This can also be observed when Sammy's manager, Le...
However, he disagrees with his boss, and Sammy ends up quitting his job which was not very smart. Sammy upholds the three girls and their negative actions. In addition, Sammy does not even get any of the girls. Sammy doesn't make felicitous choices. The three girls should be able to act and array appropriately.
Lengel, the manager of the store, spots the girls and gives them a hard time about their dress in the store. He tells them, “Girls, this isn’t the beach.” He says that they are not dressed appropriately to come into this grocery store. Lengel’s words cause Queenie to get embarrassed and start to blush. Sammy cannot believe this and gets frustrated at his boss. He doesn’t believe that it is right to prosecute these innocent girls for the way they are dressed. He also states at this point that the sheep are piling up over in Stokesie line trying to avoid all the commotion the scene has caused. I believe Sammy takes this as the last straw in a long string of aggravations.
The clients of Sammy’s workplace are described as having “Six children”(Updike 645) with “Veracious vein mapping their legs”(Updike 645) and ”haven 't seen the ocean in twenty years”(Updike 645). Through the details Sammy provides about the clients explains that Sammy is starved from the sight of a girl his age, and upon the first sight of a girl nearing his age, he is instantly attracted to her. The three girls in the store are Sammy’s rescue from the small tiresome town. The final point that proves Sammy’s heroic action are because of his lust for the girls is the theme of the whole short
In his short story “A&P” Sammy, the narrator is checking groceries when he sees three barefoot girls in bathing suits walk into the grocery store. Sammy is immediately fixed on the leader of the three girls, which he describes as “the queen”. He refers to this girl as queenie. As queenie leads the other two girls around the store, Sammy is enjoying watching the shock of the other customers, because they are not used to seeing girls walking around in bathing suits at the A&P. As Sammy is ringing queenie up, the manager of the grocery store comes in and tells the girls off for wearing nothing but skimpy swimsuits. The manager then proceeds to tell Sammy to ring the girls up. Sammy does as he is told but immediately after, tells the manager that he is quitting. The manager, Lengel, warns Sammy that quitting will ruin his life, but Sammy still turns in his apron and bow tie and goes out into the parking lot. The girls are long gone by the time he gets out there. Sammy watches Lengal checking ...
...u decently dressed when you come in here.” this man was entirely strict and conservative, as much was to be expected of a man around these part, he was most likely an avid church goer, Sunday school teacher, Boy Scout troop leader name your cliché. I started again “We are decent,” and before I could continue Lengel interrupted me, “Girls, I don’t want to argue with you. After this come in here with your shoulders covered. It’s our policy.” and then he walked toward the clerk with a disappointed look and asks “Sammy, have you rung up this purchase?” with an astonished expression caused by the event that just occurred before his eyes, Sammy simply replies “No” and rings me up with a great deal of haste, as to get my friends and I out of this self-righteous store before we disgrace it any further. He hands me the change then we hurry out of the store rushing to the car.
Lengel feels that even though they are a small group of harmless teenage girls picking up an item that one of their parents had sent for, they were causing a scene and violating the company policy. He has a job as the manager and it is his duty to abide by the rules. He states that "Girls, this isn’t the beach." "We want you decently dressed when you come in here." He allows them to make the purchase but also says, "After this come in here with your shoulders covered. It’s our policy."
Sammy described the customers as “sheep”. He observed that all of the customers are all going in the same direction; they easily conform to the status quo. Although Sammy respected Stocksie, Sammy believed Stocksie was another example of a soul lost to conformity. Sammy described him as, “the responsible married man”, who “thinks he is going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when it’s called the Great Alexandrov and Petrooshki Tea Company or something,” in a scoffing tone. Sammy fondly noted that the girls walked against the store’s traffic patterns. His amusement revealed his ambition to defy the town’s values. While ogling over Queenie, Sammy said, “She had her 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. Walking into the A & P with your straps down. I suppose it’s the only kind of face you can have.” Queenie’s attitude and body language appealed to Sammy because he believed his lifestyle and milieu was beneath him; he longed to be successful and rise above his
The story unfolds when, “Lengel, the store’s manager” (2191) confronts the girls because they are dressed inappropriately. To Sammy, it is a moment of embarrassment and in defiance he quits his job. The student suggests that in quitting, “Sammy challenges social inequality and is a person who is trying to
This story represents a coming-of-age for Sammy. Though it takes place over the period of a few minutes, it represents a much larger process of maturation. From the time the girls enter the grocery store, to the moment they leave, you can see changes in Sammy. At first, he sees only the physicality of the girls: how they look and what they are wearing, seem to be his only observations. As the story progresses, he notices the interactions between the girls, and he even determines the hierarchy of the small dynamic. He observes their actions and how they affect the other patrons of the business. Rather, how the other people view the girl's actions. His thought process is maturing and he starts to see things as an adult might see them.
“Sammy wishes to quit, but he resists doing so because his parents would regard his decision as 'the sad part of the story'” (Thompson 215). Sammy points out that he thinks of quitting his job many times during the story, subtle as they are, he begins with the observation of quitting during the summer rather the winter and the part where he has mentioned “the sad part of the story” (Up...
The boss, Lengel, seems to think that he has authority over Sammy, which he kind of does being the boss and everything. Sammy knows that Lengel thinks he is the big man, Sammy says, “I forgot to say he thinks he’s going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when it’s called the Great Alexandrov and Petooshki Tea Company or something”(371). This is where the story gets more complex; since Lengel thinks he is the big boss, he decides that he wants to say something to the girls about being in their bathing suits. The girls were only in the store to pick up one thing for “Queenie’s” mother, but from Sammy’s point of view, it seems as if Lengel just wanted to show that he is higher up than the other workers. Sammy thinks that Lengel disrespected the girls by telling them that they need to wear clothing the next time they came into the store, and this made Sammy mad; Sammy wanted to look like a hero of sorts to the girls and quits his job on the spot in hopes that the girls would hear him and know that he did it for
Before the girls enter the store, Sammy is unaware that the setting he is so judgmental of reflects his own life. Sammy feels that he is better than the rest of people at the A&P, referring to them as "sheep" and "house-slaves" because they never break from their daily routines. He also condescendingly talks about "whatever it is they[the customers]...mutter." Reinforcing his superiority above the people in the store, Sammy sees himself as a person that can seldom be "trip[ped]...up." Although he sees himself being superior to the store, the reality is that the store closely reflects Sammy's life. He seems to have a long-term commitment to the store since his apron has his name stitched on it, and he has been working at the store long enough to have memorized the entire contents of the "cat-and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-rice-raisins-seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-soft drinks-crackers-and-cookies." His day is also filled with the routine of working at the register, a routine that is so familiar that he has created a cash register song. Sammy also identifies with his co-worker Stokesie, "the responsible married man," and therefore wishes to someday be the manager of the store, like Lengel. Even the "checkerboard" floor represents a game of checkers, a simple one-directional game that closely models Sammy's life. Although Sammy is nineteen ...
At the beginning of the story Sammy complains about an older woman, a fifty-year-old "witch" with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, who is waiting to check out her groceries. She gets annoyed with Sammy because he is too busy drooling over the young flesh which has just walked in the door (Updike 1026). The first half-naked girl who walks into the A&P and catches Sammy’s eye is a chunky girl with a two-piece plaid bathing suit on that showed off her "sweet broad soft-looking can" (Updike l026). As if staring at this girl’s backside wasn’t enough, Sammy also noticed "those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit" (Updike 1026).
The story begins through Sammy, the narrator, working at the local A&P supermarket. He not...