Since “A & P” is a story of one individual’s gestures of protest on an issue extremely hard to define with precision, these motives are building as our story unfolds. Sammy is a good natured, average boy not even particularly restless in his boring job. He manages to find amusement in his work by making sarcastic observations of customers, by exchanging irreverent barter with Stokesie, his fellow worker, by ogling girls. When the three girls in bathing suits come into the store, they hook the slack potentials of his character in the most natural way. He is stirred by the beauty

“Sammy routinely deals with customers for whom he has no respect, describing them as witches, bums, and sheep” (Thompson 215). Sammy associates himself at the outset with HiHo crackers, and they are a fitting symbol for him—an ordinary, middle-class snack item. How seriously, then, ought one to take Sammy? How seriously does he take himself? The brand name connotes light-heartedness and high spirits. The movement of the story, and of Sammy’s perspective, is from the easy gaiety and freedom of youth toward the hard realities of adult societal judgment. Queenie is associated with “Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in pure sour cream: $.49”(Updike 214). The brand name not only fits the imperial Queenie but also suggests the social class, the upper crust, to which she belongs. The incongruity of the common HiHo crackers and a luxury horsd’oeuvers like herring snacks anticipates one aspect of the hard lesson that Sammy will learn. Queenie’s brand name symbol represents a world completely alien to that of Sammy, who visualizes her parents and their stylish friends “picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a big glass plate. Sammy learns a hard lesson about reality, the sad wisdom of compromise.

“A & P” is told after the fact by a young man now much the wiser, presumably, for his frustrating infatuation with a beautiful but inaccessible girl whose allure excites him into confusing his sexual impulses for those of honor and chivalry. The self-delusion in both cases leads quickly to an emotional fall. No doubt Sammy would reject the notion that “honor” forced him to make his gesture and stick to it.

Sammy is halfway in love with their leader, “Queenie,” who gives him an intimate and pleasurable detail, the fact that there was no place for the money to come from. “Now her hands are empty, not a ring or a bracelet, bare as God made them, and I wonder where the money’s coming from” (Updike 214). The dollar bill is lifted from her cleavage and puts Sammy in to an almost fainting predicament.

“Admiring the three girls for daring to enter the grocery store dressed in bathing suits, he especially likes the one who wears her strap down and her head high” (Greiner 297). With the lowered straps of her bathing suit, which exposed the un-tanned skin on her breasts, “Sammy draws a conclusion which suggests that they are like the commodities in the store, that is they are objects to be observed, handled, and used” (Thomson 215). He describes one of the girls as having “a soft lookin

Some topics in this essay:
Updike Sammy, Lengel Furthermore, John Updike’s, Lengel Sammy, Herring Snacks, P” Queenie, Furthermore Sammy, Sammy Gestures, “a p”, herring snacks, updike 211, brand name, bathing suits, greiner 297, girl allure excites, fancy herring snacks, allure excites, average boy, hiho crackers, breasts “the, inaccessible girl allure, infatuation beautiful inaccessible, beautiful inaccessible girl,