Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Why did Sammy quit his job in A&P
What kind of person is sammy in a&p
Why did Sammy quit his job in A&P
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Why did Sammy quit his job in A&P
This is a quite interesting story.The author chose a familiar scene as the background and the character Sammy was just an ordinary nineteen-years old cashier.This story seems like described a small argument between three girls who wore bathing suits and the manager who worked at A&P.And Sammy did support the three girls by quitting the job.It is easy to know what this story talking about,but to understand the deep meaning,we still have to think a lot after read this story. From my perspective,I believe that these three girls,the manager and Sammy all represented different components in the society. First,these three girls on behalf of newly things that wasn’t admitted by the society.The author spent a lot of words to depict how these girls
look like.They may not look strange if they went to beach,but why it can’t make sense when they in the supermarket?I guess that is because people’s common thinking.Most of us follow the rules that limit our behavior,but it doesn’t means the rest part’s behavior was wrong. The manager exactly represented the old thinking.Well,actually,I can’t judge that the old one was wrong because nothing will be totally wrong in this world.So I will focus on a really interesting character in this story—Sammy. If the three girls represented the new thing and the manager represented the old thing,so what kind of the thing does Sammy represent?I think a lot about Sammy and list many possible reasons which can explain his action.Unfortunately,I still can’t get a exactly answer.Maybe,there is not just only one answer or the answer is not come out yet.
In his short story "A & P" John Updike utilizes a 19-year-old adolescent to show us how a boy gets one step closer to adulthood. Sammy, an A & P checkout clerk, talks to the reader with blunt first person observations setting the tone of the story from the outset. The setting of the story shows us Sammy's position in life and where he really wants to be. Through the characterization of Sammy, Updike employs a simple heroic gesture to teach us that actions have consequences and we are responsible for our own actions.
While it's true that Sammy finds the three scantily-clad girls who enter the supermarket attractive, as would any normal nineteen-year-old male, what is most notable about his descriptions of the girls, and particularly of the "leader" of the group, is that Sammy holds them in contempt. Once we get beyond the descriptions of their bodies, we see nothing but derogatory comments directed at them, including the derisive nicknames that Sammy assigns to them. Nowhere is this more evident than in Sammy's description of the leader, "Queenie." The nickname assigned to her by Sammy points out the stereotypical snap judgment that Sammy makes about her personality and social status initially, and to which Sammy rigidly adheres despite no real evidence of its accuracy. From the description of her "prima donna" legs, to his imagining of ...
Along with Sammy, the other characters involved in this story are three girls shopping in the A & P in their bathing suits, whom Sammy names Plaid, Queenie and Big Tall Goony-Goony; Stokesie, Sammy's married co-worker; and Lengel, the A & P manager. The "A & P" is told from Sammy's point of view. Sammy presents himself as a nonchalant and flippant young man. He appears to be somewhat contemptuous of the older people shopping in the store. However, near the end of the story, we see that he does take responsibility for his conscience-driven behavior and decision, revealing his passage out of adolescence into adulthood through the courage of his convictions.
As the student develops his essay, Sammy begins to compare the girls to other customers in the store. From “houseslaves in pin curlers” to “an old party in baggy gray pants” (2192 ), Sammy negatively characterizes customers in contrast to the leader of the girls, Queenie. To Sammy, the girl is someone that is not from their town. She is everything that every girl envies and wants to be. In contrast to Sammy, she will spend her summer vacationing while he spends it working. It is clear to Sammy that their worlds are different, however it is also obvious that he would like to explore hers.
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.
I quit! These words can be attached to so many things in life. At times in life things seem to be different then they really are, for instance the thrill and the excitement of having a summer job or even successfully getting a first job. There are certain moments in a person’s life that will always have an impact on them one could call this a definitive moment or an epiphany. In the short story A&P by John Updike the main character Sammy has an epiphany in that he realizes that a moral line has been crossed in his working environment.
John Updike’s “A&P” is a short story about a nineteen year old boy during the 1960’s that has a summer job at the local A&P grocery. The main character in the story, Sammy, realizes that life isn’t always fair and that sometimes a person makes decisions that he will regret. Sammy sees that life doesn’t always go as planned when three young girls in bathing suits walk in and his manager Lengel gives them a hard time, and he comes to term with that sometimes you make bad decisions.
Although one’s good deeds may often not be acknowledged, the inevitable lesson of maturity can be taught through such experiences. In “A&P”, Sammy is a teenage clerk who is not acknowledged for accomplishing what he thinks is a good deed. During a hot day, three teenage girls walks into the A&P grocery store, wearing only their bathing suits. The image of the girl’s revealing attire provides an absolute contrast to both the simple interior of the store and also of the other conservative customers. Sammy describes the customers as “sheeps” because they look mindless as they follow each other around the aisles in continual, constant motion. However, these three girls conflict with the imagery of “sheeps” by breaking the norms of what the A&P grocery store, and society in general, has proclaimed as acce...
We see this in the opening line of the story: "In walks three girls in nothing but bathing suits" (Updike 1026). Even the voice of Sammy is very "familiar and colloquial" (Uphaus 373). Much of the information that Sammy relays about the three girls is sexually descriptive in a nineteen-year-old boy’s way: "and a sweet broad looking can [rear] with those two crescents of white under it, where the sun never seems to hit" (Updike 1026). It is apparent that Sammy looks at the three girls who happen to walk into the A&P only as objects of lust or possibly boyish desire. Thus, on the surface it is easy to take this story as that of a boy who would do something like quit his job to "impress" these girls.
The story begins as if it is any mundane workday at the A&P. Sammy is a typical teen, making sarcastic comparisons of the customers in the grocery store. He calls one of his customers a "witch" and says the other customers are "house slaves" and "sheep." Sammy obviously dislikes the job, but finds ways of passing the day. However, from the moment the three girls enter the A&P to their exit from the store, you can see dramatic changes in Sammy. Sammy lusts for the young girls, and nicknames the most attractive to him as “Queenie”. The young girls dressed in bathing suits fascinate him, and although he is staring at them excessively, he negatively comments on the others for doing the same. As the girls walk past the older employee, McMahon, Sammy notices how he ogled the girls and pats his mouth. Sammy appears disgusted by his gesture and begins to sympathize for the girls. “Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldn’t help it" (Upd...
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
The beginning of “A & P” starts with the main character, Sammy, at work when three girls in nothing but bathing suits walks in. According to Lawrence Dessner, the A & P check out counter showed Sammy a sample of insult and indignity of ordinary people (317). He may not have liked the people that shopped there, but he received insight of the real world. A woman that was currently at Sammy's counter was middle aged and brought Sammy no sympathy to the shoppers; he sometimes mention them as sheep. His names of the shoppers also include insight of Sammy's view of the ordinary shoppers; Sammy did not care much for others.
The use of a relaxed tone in a first-person narrative voice simplifies the language to a degree that suggests the narrator is quite young, probably still in his teens. His job at the A&P may be his first real working experience in his small town, and it is evident that he has adopted a certain mindset about the people who come in. When three unique girls (unique among each other and unique to their environment) enter the store in bathing suits and bare feet, Sammy is excited by the change in pace. He becomes so mentally involved with their existence without mentioning any sort of sexual attraction, that even the reader adopts an awe in Queenie and her followers. Sammy is young, but his behavior is most mature, and certainly admirable.
Unlike many of the short stories we read, “A&P” by John Uplike displays the familiar effects of anti-Feminism and unnecessary conformity in both female and male characters. The story is placed in the 1960’s in a grocery store on a sunny afternoon. Three young, beautiful ladies walk in wearing their bathing suits and begin stir up controversy in the quite store. Even though none of the three girls have done anything wrong still everyone working and shopping in the store, with the exception of Sammy and Stokesie, seem in some ways disgusted with the girls attire. Of course this affects me and other young women; knowing that in the 1960’s women were treated with disrespect about their bodies and are still today treated this way. A mixture of bland setting, contrasting characters and a fairly uneventful plot the story unravels into a powerful story that brings out the negative and anti-feminism attitudes in a corrupt society.
John Updike's A&P provides numerous perspectives for critical interpretation. His descriptive metaphors and underlying sexual tones are just the tip of the iceberg. A gender analysis could be drawn from the initial outline of the story and Sammy's chauvinism towards the female. Further reading opens up a formalist and biographical perspective to the critic. After several readings I began seeing the Marxist perspective on the surreal environment of A&P. The economic and social differences are evident through Sammy's storytelling techniques and even further open up a biographical look at Updike's own view's and opinions. According to an essay posted on the internet Updike was a womanizer in his own era and displayed boyish immaturity into his adulthood. A second analysis of this story roots more from a reader-response/formalist view. Although Sammy centered his dramatization around three young females, more specifically the Queen of the trio, it was a poignant detailed head to toe description of scene. I'll touch on that later.