There are many conflicts in A & P, but the main one being between Sammy and the supermarket manager. Lengel thinks that the girls are dressed inappropriate. He confronts them about their skimpy attire, embarrassing them causing Sammy to get angry. Sammy’s reaction to this was that he decides to quit, he quits not only to prove a point to the manager, but also to impress the girls. At the end when he leaves the store in hopes to see the girls, he comes to realize they are nowhere to be…
Sammy 's struggle against rules is seen in the way he viewed the company 's policyin regard to the type of clothes the three girls namely; "Queenie", "Plaid" and "Big Tall"wore to the store. To him confronting a customer, and for that matter the three girls, whoflout the store 's policy, amounts to embarrassing the customer and the three girlsRespectively. "You didn 't have to embarrass them" (132) . He thinks it is inappropriate forhis boss to confront the three girls shopping wearing a swimming costume. In the processof registering his disapproval against this policy, he ends up disobeying an authorityfigure in the person of his boss. He shows his disapproval to this policy by giving up hisjob. "I quit"(132). On the part of Tommy, he did not displayed his struggle against ruleswith an open defiance as is the case of Sammy. When the substitute teacher ordered him together with his two friends to take up their seat, he nor any of his friends put up aresistance. Even though they stared at her, but they obeyed her command by taking uptheir seat and not giving up or "quitting" on their education.…
The primary focal point is the young man's love for a completely unattainable girl who unknowingly riles the man into such a frenzy that he begins to confuse sexual impulses for those of honor. This is shown in "A & P" when Sammy quits his job in protest over the girls being mistreated. He hopes to impress the girls with this. It is this example of self-deception that both stories concentrate that brings the young man to his emotional knees as he is forced to return to normal life…
Sammy is absolutely thrilled when the three girls approach his check out line. At this time the manager of the A&P enters the picture and tells the girls that bathing suits are not proper attire for a supermarket. Then Sammy embarks upon the ultimate form of play that, although immature, is sometimes used by adults to make an impression on others. He ultimately sacrifices his job, saying, "I quit"(129). His motivation for quitting is the hope that "Queenie" would stop and thank him, her unsuspected hero.…
He interprets one customer as being old, dull and unable to relate to young people only because the customer was elderly, is an example of being cynical. Sammy’s intensive opinions and interpretations proved his lack of knowledge outside the small town. For example, he is disrespectful in his thoughts towards the “A & P” customers, seeing them as “sheep” and “houseslaves.” This is the part that it becomes obvious that he does not care about the customers and is unhappy at his job.…
Besides the obvious examples given throughout the short story, Updike also provides subtle clues of Sammy’s immaturity. As Sammy leaves the store after quitting, he describes walking through the door “in [his] white shirt that [his] mother ironed the night before” (228). It can be assumed that he is finished with high school and has been working for at least a year. He is still allowing his mother to take care of him or “baby” him. At nineteen, Sammy is more than capable of performing such a simplistic act. Also, during the climax of the story, Sammy announces “I quit” (228) primarily because he wants the girls to overhear him, and the gesture loses resonance when he realizes they didn’t notice. Rather than coherently explaining himself for his reason for quitting, Sammy recites “Fiddle-de-doo” (228) which is a frivolous saying of his grandmother. It is childish to dismiss an authoritative figure so easily with such a ridiculous phrase. This is supposed to be the dramatic conflict of the story; however, Sammy’s immaturity hides him from realizing the importance of his actions at that moment.…
Sammy’s attitudes toward the customer show him as an immature young man. Sammy’s comments and how he described customers as being old, dull, and unable to relate to young people. He addressed the first customer he comes across as “one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch of about fifty with rouge on how cheekbone and no eyebrow, and I know it made her day to trip me up”. He also described them as a “sheep pushing their carts down the aisle”. Through Sammy’s attitude toward the customers, we can say that his tired of regular customer, regular customers including these older married women, with kids, the overweight lady, and the old ladies who spend years trying to catch an error by cashier. We can simply see his immaturity and he does not particularly care for the customers.…
A&P is a story about a boy names Sammie who works in a supermarket. In this story Sammie is telling the readers what he sees with an elaborate devotion to detail. One day while he is working, three girls walk in with swimsuits on. He is shown to have some sort of instant attraction to one of the girls. He sees the most attractive girl to be the leader of the three nicknaming her “Queenie”, and while he goes in to detail of how beautiful her features are, he tells of how her “followers” were chubby and unattractive. When Sammie’s manager spots the girls, he scolds them about their attire. Sammie wanting to come to the rescue of the girls quits. His manager is a friend of his parents and tells him he is making a mistake, but Sammie doesn’t care. He walks out the store hoping to see “his” girls, but when they are nowhere in sight he realizes he’s made a mistake that was foolish.…
Updike portrays Sammy, the main character in the short story “A & P” as a naïve boy of nineteen who views the people of society, i.e. his customers, as “sheep pushing their carts down the asle” (Updike 226). Part of the irony of the story is the contrast between the ending, where everything seems routine (including the customers), and the beginning, with Sammy’s impulsive decision. He quits his job (he says) in order to present himself as a “hero” to the swimsuit-clad girls who disrupt the usual pattern of the “sheep-like” customers. Sammy metaphorically describes his customers as animals, showing little respect towards them and depicting them as “sheep pushing their carts” and “scared pigs in a chute” (226, 228). In turn, he rejects society’s idea of normalcy and tries to escape it by quitting his job as a cashier at the A & P. As quoted by Corey Evan Thompson, “[Sammy is] a young man who takes full advantage of an opportunity to free himself from the responsibility-filled life that he desperately wants to avoid” (216). One could come to a conclusion that Sammy is portrayed somewhat as a rebel because of his wanting to break away from society and its “normal” behavior. As…
Updike's "A & P" is rich in symbolism and begins in the very first paragraph. Sammy is eyeing the three bikini-clad girls who walk into his supermarket where he is a checker. His reverie is interrupted, however, by a "witch" whose "feathers" Sammy has to smooth. The older generation are typically symbolized in negative terms throughout the story, those women who cannot and will not understand youth.…
Examples of Rebellion in John Updike's "A& P"� In "A & P"� John Updike develops a theme of rebellion by introducing us to Sammy, a young grocery store checker with a rebellious attitude. It is through Sammy's thoughts and comments that Updike clearly shows us examples of rebellion. Starting with comments of disdain and disrespect for his customers, Updike leads up to the ultimate act of rebellion when Sammy quits his job. Updike cleverly explores his theme of rebellion by describing Sammy's attitude toward his customers, co-workers and his parents.…
Sammy seems to have a rather indifferent outlook on his job and the people in the A&P. I see the confliction in Sammy regarding his job in how he looks at the purpose of the store and refers to it as a “pinball machine” rather than an essential part of the community. He also has little regard for the mature women in the grocery store, as he views them as “sheep” more or less grazing down the aisles. He also refers to the elderly woman who is focused on her grocery bill as a “witch”. Rather than being courteous to all of the customers, Sammy only focuses on the bodies of the young girls in bathing suits, typical of a teen boy. Sammy is very blasé about his job which can be seen when he says “The store’s pretty empty, it being Thursday afternoon, so there was nothing much to do except lean on the register and wait for the girls to show up again.” Over all, Sammy could be described as a typical teenaged boy with no respect or understanding of women who lets his hormones cloud his judgment.…
John Updike’s “A & P” offers a first person narrative of a young supermarket employee in a typical blue collar town. Sammy tells us a story about the events and observations that lead up to eventually quitting his job. The narration is immediate in tone and feels as if you are in the middle of a conversation with Sammy himself. Within the text we are offered Sammy’s thoughts of social class, disdain for town-folk, and his perceived need to achieve a higher station in life. Sammy’s dreams and beliefs are immature in nature; his thinking that one’s success is defined by money, prestige, and social class is flawed. The interactions Sammy has during this one day at the A&P give the reader insights into Updike’s thoughts on freedom, changes, and…
Part-II With reference to A&P by John Updike 1. Plot: The plot of the story "A&P" comprises of three young modern girls, a young man, Sammy, the store manager and some other people. The vent is the arrival of the young girls in the A&P store in a small town of the New England. As the people see the girls with astonishment, and manager raises objections over their swimsuits, Sammy leaves the job due to his manager's misbehavior with the girl.…
for nothing. Now he has no job and no girls. Sammy the narrator in the "A&P" wants to show that he can be a hero by quitting his job as a cashier cause the girls felt…