Not Mature Yet

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Recommended: Coming of age in popular literature

Sammy, a 19-year-old cashier at an A&P, has an encounter with women and authority. A&P, by John Updike, is a story of an adolescent lad that not only reminds us of our youth, but also reminds us of the mistakes that we had to make as we became adults. Sammy’s actions were not those that made him mature instantly, but his actions were lessons to be learned in order to mature.
As three girls enter an A&P, Sammy, a cashier, is amazed by the beauty and boldness of them. When he first notices them, the eye-catching wardrobe they adorned had caught his eye. They were only wearing bathing suits. He begins to examine each one as if he were creating a chart of the best one. He examines each one and soon picks the leader of the group to whom he focuses his attention the most. The physical characteristic and dress of “… the queen,” as he names her, draws all of his attention and soon clouds the judgment of the environment around him (18). It is a perfect scenario of adolescent boys that haven’t experienced relationships or have had many encounters with the opposite sex. His naive youth has given him tunnel vision.
As he idolizes the girls in the store, he places them on a pedestal. He passes off the mundane shopping that others do as boring and predictable. Referring to people as sheep, he sees them as mere peasants that notice the queen and her court of two, but never make a scene about them (19). The attitude that he implies about them is they are not worthy of encountering these royalties, or worse, question their attire. He builds this fantasy in his mind that these girls are something to be admired by being so bold to show and parade their beauty in a simple grocery store. He belittles the attention that his coworkers show as if the...

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...he girls he admired or society. His inexperience on how to resolve or act in confrontations led him to react in a way that was not rational. Although he sees that his actions have no effect, we can only see that this is a learning process that every adolescent must go through on the path to maturity.

Works Cited

Dessner, Lawrence Jay. "Irony and Innocence in John Updike's 'A & P'." Studies in Short Fiction 25.3 (Summer 1988): 315-317. Rpt. in Short Stories for Students. Ed. Kathleen Wilson. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.
Peltier, Robert. "An essay on “A & P”." Short Stories for Students. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Feb. 2014.
Updike, John. “A&P” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 7th ed. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Boston: Pearson, 2013. 17-21. Print

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