Short Story A & P By John Updike

“A&P’ by John Updike is a very comical short story. When I read this story for the first time I laughed the whole time but I also felt bad for Sammy towards the end. Sammy says “ I said I quit” Sammy ended up quitting his job just because he thought that the three girls were being treated very unfairly. It was hilarious when Sammy quit his job then he went to the parking lot to find the girls but they were not there. Sammy believed that the store manager Lengel wasn’t treating the three girls fairly so he stood up for what he believed in and quit his job. Sammy didn’t think that Lengel was being reasonable while talking to the girls. Queenie says “we weren’t doing any shopping. We just came in for one thing” (pg. 203) Then Lengel replies
Sammy says “and then the third one, that wasn’t quite so tall. She was the queen. She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and making their shoulders round. She didn’t look around not this queen she just walked straight on slowly on these long white prima Dona legs” (201) Sammy was attracted to all three of the girls but the one that he liked the most was queenie. He had a lot of details to describe the way queenie looked and what she was doing. Sammy says “You know, it’s one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on a beach where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway and another thing in the cool of the A&P, Under the florescent lights, against all those stacked packages with her feet paddling along naked over our checker- bored green and cream rubber tile floor.” (202). Although Sammy had never met Sammy it seemed like he was falling in love with her. He says that if he would have seen her at the beach he would have never been so interested it her but since he first saw her in A&P he is able to see the true beauty in her because of how bright the lights were in the