John Updike's "A&P"

In A&P John Updike uses an immature young man and his decisions to show how the transition from boyhood to adulthood sometimes has harsh consequences. Sammy the protagonist makes what seems to be an immature decision that he believes is the right thing to do. However, his actions go unnoticed by Queenie and her friends leaving Sammy to grow up and deal with his consequences on his own. Throughout the story it is clear that Sammy is very young and immature. Much of the descriptive information that Sammy relays is sexually driven the way a nineteen year old would think. The descriptions of the three girls, focuses on their physical characteristics like their “can” and breasts. Sammy describes the first girl that caught his eye as a “chunky kid with a good tan and a sweet broad soft looking can with those two crescents of white just under it where the sun never seems to hit at the top of the back of her legs”. Sammy is constantly lusting over the girls and describing their characteristics. He describes Queenie with her straps of her bathing suit “pushed off and nothing between the top of her suite and the top of her head except just her”. Although his lustfulness seems to be coming from an immature nineteen year old boy, Updike is suggesting that Sammy is in transition from boyhood to adulthood. Although he is wearing “white shirt that his mother ironed the night before,” he relates himself with his older co-worker Stokesie by saying the only difference between them is that “Stokesie’s married with two babies chalked up on his fuselage”. Updike also reveals Sammy’s transition from boyhood to adulthood by Sammy’s dissatisfaction of the thought of just staying at A&P as a life career choice like Stokesie wanted to do by becoming manager someday. Sammy sees life as existing beyond the A&P which suggests the transition. Now as Sammy makes a bold statement “I quit” after his boss has embarrassed the three girls, he knows he must follow through with his decision. Lengel even tells Sammy “I don’t think you know what you’re saying” suggesting that he isn’t old enough to make the right decision. But Sammy replies “I know you don’t, but I do” showing that he is capable and old enough to make his own decisions even ones that might bring shame to his family. Sammy also explained that once you begin a gesture, it’s fatal to not follow through with it. The transition into adulthood is clear when he quits his job and recalls every detail distinctly. “I fold the apron, ‘Sammy’ stitched in red on the pocket and put it on the counter”. Lengel says to Sammy “You’ll feel this for the rest of your life” and he acknowledges this to be true. As he goes outside he “looks around for the girls, but they’re gone of course,” showing an obvious not so hopeful end to the situation from the decision he made. His realization that he is not just a boy anymore becomes even more apparent as he looked back in the big window and recalls his “stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me here after”.