Actions Speak louder than words...In the story Sammy can be
Actions Speak louder than words...In the story Sammy can be
The primary conflict in the story “A&P” by John Updike, is the inner conflict that Sammy is faced with during his encounter with the young girls in bathing suits. As a young man he has always did what was expected of him and shown to be an upstanding young man. After he experienced the actions of how his manager treated the young girls, due to them not adhering to society’s standards of dress for the time; he became angry and expressed this anger by removing himself from the manager and his narrow point of view. Sammy wasn’t sure what he did was right but he felt it was right at the time because he wanted to rebel. This was probably the first time in his life he ever really stood up for himself or anyone else and now he is faced with the repercussions…
2. Updike mainly characterizes Sammy through his thoughts about the three girls in the supermarket. It seems as though Sammy identifies more with the frivolity of his age group as opposed to a more moralistic and responsible approach. Sammy is displayed as a hero (or wants to be) when he defends the girls, but it is soon realized that he only does it for attention. This along with the fact that his plan does not work out makes him less of a hero.…
Updike wrote a story called "A+P". In this story there is a very complex character, his name is Sammy. This story was written in 1961. It is currently the year of 2015, and people are still debating whether Sammy is a heroic character or not. I believe that Sammy is a heroic character because he stands up for the girls, he stands up against Lengel, and cares for the girls.…
John Updike's story A&P is about a nineteen year old boy, Sammy, who has a job at the local grocery store, the A&P. Sammy works at the register in the store and is always observing the people who walk in and out each day. On this particular day that the story takes place, Sammy is caught off guard when a cluster of girls walk into the store wearing just their bathing suits. This caught Sammy's attention because the nearest beach is five miles away and he could not figure out why they would still be in their suits. Sammy continues to overlook the girls in the store throughout their endeavor to pick up some item's that they were sent in for. While they are wandering around the store Sammy watches the reactions of other customers, is yelled at for ringing up a woman's item twice, and watches the whereabouts and gestures of the girls until checkout. Once the girls proceed to checkout they are approached by the manager of the store for being improperly dressed in public. Sammy felt that the encounter with the manager was unnecessary and discomforting to the girls and he decides it is time to quit his job. Sammy's decision to quit his job at the grocery store shows his development from an immature teenager to a person who will take a position for what he believes in no matter the consequences.…
In the short story “A&P”, John Updike makes the character Sammy fail in the end unlike a typical hero to show how heroes are irrelevant in society. When Sammy announces that he quits, he hopes the girls are watching and thinks of himself as “their unsuspected hero” (4). In Sammy’s eyes, he is a hero to the girls because he is the one standing up to the dragon and saving the three princesses from his wrath. He is doing the noble thing by quitting his job and fighting the dragon so the princesses can retain their honor. He wants the princesses to watch him do it and acknowledge his heroics. However, when he goes outside to look for the girls, he finds that “they’re gone, of course” (5). Sammy is the girls’ hero but they left without him. The…
Sammy acted on impulse when he felt that Lengel embarrassed the girls. Sammy’s adolescent thinking was demonstrated in the story when he said “The girls, and who’d blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say “I quit” to Lengel quick enough from them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero” (Updike 20). Being an adolescent Sammy believed that this would make him stand out to the girls and be liked by them for quitting his job on their behalf. The only person Sammy made a impression on was Lengel. It wasn’t heroics Lengel seen in Sammy. It was immaturity.…
The readers are to view Sammy as a typical teenager: indifferent to those around him (except to queenie) and yet, markedly self-conscious. He proves to be an observant narrator, allowing the reader farther inspection into our protagonist. We see Sammy drink in the details of the three girls; he pays close attention to the textures of their suits, their facial features, and tan lines. However, Sammy goes beyond what he physically observes and attempts to glean what their lives are like outside of A&P. What he sees, is attractive and his appetite for association has a distinct influence over his future decisions. This is drives his observations to become detrimentally tunnelled. As Sammy dismisses A&P customers and co-workers and quits, he is…
Sammy is a nineteen year old boy who is just trying to figure out his place in this world. He is a clerk at a supermarket where his parents were able to get him the job. He finds himself standing behind the cash register entertained by analyzing the people who walk in trying to figure out what is going on in their minds. He stands up for what he believes, but just hasn’t quite figured out how or when to confront a person when he finds himself disagreeing with them.…
But this is where Sammy has an epiphany. He realizes how his beliefs and his actions don’t match and decides that not only would taking a stand for the girls be right, but also he might be able to join there group. Even though he might face public backlash for sticking out, he also might receive some like minded friends. Unfortunately, Queenie and the trio don’t seem to have cared about Sammy’s heroic actions. Although, Sammy decided to take action and stick it to conformity he inevitably gets screwed over by his decision ending the story with Sammy knowing his life will undoubtedly be harder, because of his decision to no longer conform.…
Sammy gave up his job in order to impress Queenie. In doing so he demonstrated a fearless stupidity. Despite all his efforts to get the girl to notice him, he walked away with no reward. Although he did it in order to woo Queenie, Sammy is somewhat a hero of justice. He stood up for the week, and defended her against a prejudice villain. His boss chose to attack the girls in front of everyone, making them look like fools. Sammy only did what he thought was right.…
Sammy, a cashier for A & P, is tired of the hum-drum grocery life. He is bored with how the “sheep” file in and mindlessly go about their shopping routine. When the girls come in in an unexpected way, it brings excitement into the store. He is attracted not only to them physically but their rule-breaking ways. He negatively describes the customer he checks out as a “witch, along with other customers as “sheep”. Also, he pins his manager, Lengel, as a “dreary, Sunday school teacher”, and his co-worker, Stoksie, as married with kids. He obviously realizes that he does not want to be a part of the controlled ways of the establishment when he makes the decision to quit. It is quite a bold, rebellious move, although, conformably, he also ogled the girls. Although he was against Lendel embarrassing “Queenie”, he still was not totally innocent of conformity. But as he followed through with his decision, it marked his emergence into his own thinking as an adult.…
While standing in front of the store watching the girls drive away Sammy realizes that he might have not done the right thing. He looks towards the store and wonders if the crush he had on Queenie was worth the trouble he just went through. In the beginning of the story Sammy is just working his regular shift on a regular day of any week. You would think that he was satisfied with his job and everything that was going on. When three girls in bathing suits walk in; Sammy thinks that maybe these girls are coming in from the beach and he was right. Seeing the girls come in the store kind of woke Sammy up a little not taking his eyes off the girls and describing exactly what they were wearing. Having a customer in front of him, Sammy loses track of what he was doing and ends up on the wrong end of one of his customers. Sammy says, “I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not.” After Sammy calmed down the old lady, he returned his attention to the girls pointing out the direction they were walking towards unsure if they were what their intentions were.…
In John Updike's short story A & P, a young man named Sammy takes witness to what he sees as an injustice happening to a group of bikini-clad teenage girls in the grocery store in which he works. He takes a bold step and decides he would rather not work for a manager that decided to embarrass the young girls in front of everyone instead of addressing them privately, so he quits. The bold step that he takes is part of his initiation into adulthood. Updike develops the initiation through the story and it becomes the central theme.…
While Sammy's limited perspective might make him unreliable, it also shows some major growth on his part. It also shows us that he is willing to think and act differently than the people around him. We think the fact that Sammy's point of view changes over the course of the story is more important than him just being a narrator. At the beginning of the story he is simply whining and complaining in his mind. By the girls wearing their bathing suits into the store and showing Sammy how you can be different helps him stand up for himself. Sammy follows by removing his A&P bow tie and apron when he quits, expressing unity with the girls and using his clothing, like them, as a form of symbol. Over the course of the story, he…
Sammy A 19-year-old cashier at an A & P supermarket, and the narrator of "A & P." He quits his job in a fit of teen angst and sexual attraction.…