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John Updikes A&P Essay

 

            The story of John Updike's "A&P" is staged at a grocery store. A young guy named Sammy is the main character of the story. Sammy is 18 years old and he is a cashier at A&P. The story is set in a town North of Boston in 1960. .
             Sammy talked about everyone who walked in at A&P. He called all the customers animal names like "the sheep". This made his time at work pass by quicker by calling some women house slaves in pin curlers or calling some of the other customers sheep or cattle. Sammy was ringing up an old woman, whom he called a witch because she snapped at him for ringing up an item twice. He rang up the item twice because he was distracted. Three young girls wearing nothing but their bathing suits walk in to A&P. He quickly describes them from top to bottom. He describes one of them as "chunky " but with a nice can. Another one with a "chubby berry face" and "her lips all bunched up under her nose", tall with black hair and long chin." The last one he called his queen. She was the leader of the girls. He saw her as perfect. He described how perfectly she walked on her feet as if she never walked on bare feet in her life. He described how she wore her bathing suit and noticed that her shoulder straps were down and thought to himself that she did this deliberately. He wonders how girls" minds work and how they can manipulate a situation. As he still daydreams about Queenie, over his shoulder was Stokesie. This guy Stokesie was also sizing up the girls and poking fun at them too. Sammy notices the sheep, as he calls the curious people, wanting to know what all the commotion is about. They want to know why three young girls, so far from the beach, walked into the A&P in only their bathing suits. They walked the whole store and they thought they were doing nothing wrong. They finally walked down and had nothing but one little jar of Fancy Herring Snacks. With all this commotion Lengel, the store manager, comes up to the girls and tells them they have to leave because they were not appropriately dressed.


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