“A & P” by John Updike, is the story of a miserably employed young man. Using the first person point of view, Updike’s central character, Sammy, develops the setting to tell the story of how a discontented young grocer named Sammy, is thrust into the harsh realities of the adult world after making a relatively childish decision.
The story is set in a conservative New England town before the sexual revolution and pre-hippies 1960s. Life tends to be stable, predictable and consistent. Sammy has recently turned nineteen years old; an age at which the stone that things were once written in, begins to erode. The late teen years tend to be the age when most people begin to have a greater sense of who they truly are. As a result, they will tend to challenge authority as well as the values and social mores that they have been told all their lives are “right”. However, this age also marks the period in life where the line between childish rebellion and asserting oneself as a responsible adult becomes blurry.
The town that “A&P” is set in seems to be anything but accommodating to this period in life. The area is reminiscent of those towns such as Oxford and my hometown, Vicksburg, which have offici
It is another example of how Sammy’s social development is still at the boy-man stage. All he can think about is the fact that there are three scantily clad females in his vicinity. In some sense, referring to parts of the girls’ anatomy as a “can”(1) and “the two smoothest scoops of vanilla”(21) could be considered chauvinistic. Then, the reader must consider that the manner in which he is conducting himself is consistent with the behavior of a socially- retarded, girl-crazy teenage boy. He attempts to defend the girls from Lengel and come off as some chivalrous hero, but it is obvious his motives are purely the result of his overactive hormones. I doubt he would have reacted in the same manner had three forty-something; overweight ladies come in wearing bikinis.
The audience may even be brought to the conclusion that Updike may be injecting some of his own feelings about the onslaught of the supermarket culture at the time the story was written. Updike grew up during a period in which the old “Mom and Pop” stores were the only places available to shop. With the arrival of supermarkets during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, the mom and pop stores of his day were driven out of business. Updike’s characterization of the customers and manager
Example Essays Home
