A & P By John Updike Summary

In the short essay titled A&P by John Updike, the readers are introduced to a worker at the store, called Sammy. Sammy begins as a typical adolescent male, by immediately seeing three girls in bikinis and makes the comment, “In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits” (Updike, 1). This comment is typical because all a guy sees is all the skin being shown. The three girls, halved dressed, immediately catch the customer's’ attention at the store and are proving to be quite a distraction to the shoppers. They even distract Sammy so greatly, he is unaware if he even rang a box of HiHo crackers. Sammy goes on with his descriptions of the girls, thinking how unusual it was for girls to walk in dressed like them. The beach is five miles

away, but the store is still in the middle of the town where most people would put on a shirt or shorts before entering. As Sammy and the other guys continued to eye the girls, the manager comes out and states that this is not a beach. Quickly the girls start defending themselves and become embarrassed. The manager then states, “We want you decently dressed when you come in here” (Updike, 3) furthering embarrassing the girls and causing them to leave. Sammy responds to his manager's’ decision drastically, by quitting.

Sammy’s character is shown making a tremendous decision at the end, and by this Sammy has shown some serious growth.

Sammy begins normally, staring at the girls and making comments about them, for example Sammy notices that they are not even wearing shoes, one can only notice this if they are watching carefully. Sammy continues to stare at them and observe their behaviour as the story continues. He does not take his eyes off of the girls until he notices that his manager cis starting to head their way. He continues to spy on them and hears his manager tell the girls they are not properly dressed for the store, the girls are embarrassed and proceed to leave the store. Sammy was upset that his manager, a friend of his parents, outright humiliated the girls that walked in. Sammy did not agree with the statement that caused the girls to leave. Sammy disliked it so much that he decided to resign, knowing full well that it would make his parents mad at him “ He's been a friend of my parents for years. "Sammy, you don't want to do this to your Mom and Dad," he tells me. It's true, I don't” (Updike, 5). Sammy still went through with his decision, and then proceeded to look for the girls to try and show them that he took a stand for them and he was essentially on their side. Sammy could have stood back and watched the girls leave like all the other patrons did, but Sammy decided that it was not fair to the girls who only had to buy one

thing.
Sammy grew a lot in a short amount of time, in the beginning he was a normal young boy who enjoyed the view of the girls and did not mind them. He changed by realizing what was more important, no one should be publically humiliated. When he saw the girls’ faces go red with embarrassment he didn’t want to stand on the sidelines, he wanted to help the girls and show them that it was okay. Sammy knew that his parents would be mad, but he still decided to quit to show his manager that is was not okay to kick them out of the store, because of the way they dressed. Sammy grew up by standing up for the girls, even if they didn’t outright see him to do it; Sammy made an impression on the manger. Therefore, the next time some girls show up in bikinis the manager may rethink his decision of what to do because of Sammy’s actions.