How would feel to be in a town with mostly old and Lethargic community of people with traditional behavior and believes? Sammy is a Cash Register at the A&P supermarket near the beach in Boston. Everyday, he sees new tourists visiting the beach but one day, three girls with very inappropriate/attractive dress came inside. Perhaps, it is rare to see people like that because the town has traditional people with appropriate clothes. Sammy observes the girls very Meticulously as if they were aliens from different planet. However, the Manager of A&P, Lengel, yells at the girls to wear appropriate clothing. Sammy was very aggressive over Lengel and decides to quit his job because he thought it was time to leave the boring community and the unfair …show more content…
Our community loves the outside world and many people love enjoying the nature’s beauty. Only some old people don’t come out much often. However, if the majority population in our society was only senior citizens, then those few young ones would have a dull life seeing old people everywhere. “there’s people in this town haven’t seen the ocean for twenty years”(pg.48). This shows that the town that Sammy lives in has people who don’t even go to the beach even though it is so close to their house. This tells us that the people are probably old or inactive. Would you think you could live happily in such a boring town? Sammy’s community really motivated him to get out of the town and explore the new world beyond his daily life. All this nuisance happening in sammy’s town proves that he wanted to find freedom. Every time new customers from out of town come into his store, sammy really admired them and wishes he sees them everyday but there’s only old people in his town. After all this frustration and eagerness to live different community, Sammy finally quits his job to show that Lengel that he had enough. Now he can be free from Boredom and explore the rest of the world until he finds his
Have you ever felt safe somewhere, but realized your only protection was ignorance? In Jacqueline Woodson’s When a Southern Town Broke a Heart, she introduces the idea that as you grow and change, so does your meaning of home. Over the course of the story, Woodson matures and grows older, and her ideas about the town she grew up in become different. When she was a nine year old girl, Woodson and her sister returned to their hometown of Greenville, South Carolina by train. During the school year, they lived together in Downtown Brooklyn, and travelled to.
When he sees the girls, he feels that there are people who are able to break out what is expected and can act different. By quitting his job, Sammy shows he is no “sheep” and have authority to act differently. The story takes place in a grocery store in a beach town. Without the setting, the girls would not have wandered the aisles and Sammy would not have a chance to quit his job. The theme of the story is appearance.
Sammy describes the manager of the local A&P store as someone who is “pretty dreary, teaches Sunday school and the rest, but he doesn 't miss that much” (Updike 3). Sammy thought Lengel as someone who is the very definition of a human being who prefers order over rebellion, being constantly engaged in prosaic activities and is attentive to his surroundings, as he is aware of everything that occurs within the store he manages. Perhaps in a way, Sammy envisions himself to be a more youthful version of his employer as he parades around the
The overall attitude of a person is not always noticeable upon first glance. The way in which the individual acts, thinks, or perceives a particular situation is only truly shown through his/her point of view. In the short story, “A&P,” John Updike portrays a particular situation to characterize the attitude of the young narrator. With attention to details, diction, and point of view, Updike amplifies the observant and opinionated attitude of a teenager named Sammy.
“A&P” by John Updike is a short story expressing the issues of female objectification and degradation in society by following a young A&P employee’s views (Sammy) as they change through experiences second hand. Sammy goes from stereotyping objectifier to a form of a public defender, standing up for girls who can’t really do so for themselves. Sammy initially characterizes and describes all of the people in the store based on their looks and his initial opinion of them, rather than waiting to make judgements based on their personality, or not at all. He is very critical of looks, and is judgmental about why and how they look or act the way they do.
Lengel states, “We want you decently dresses when you come in here”. Which the girls respond, “We are decent”. Blushing, the girls seem to feel embarrassed and uncomfortable. Disliking how Lengel speaks to the girls, Sammy decides to take a dramatic step and quits his job. He tries to impress the girls with this gesture, but the girls had already left.
Sammy’s decision is stated by all as a terrible mistake. Sammy slips out of his slot and walks straight towards the door and walks out without looking back. Not surprisingly he thinks to himself, “I look around for my girls, but they're gone, of course.” While trying to use a heroic gesture to feel equivalent to the girls they seem to have not appreciated the gesture and leave.
This ego that Lengel has makes Sammy not want to be around his job in order to stay away from his manager.
Sammy knows that quitting his job will eventually make his life a lot worse, but he sticks to his decision because he does not like what the store has to offer him. When Sammy walks out of the store he is not only leaving behind a job, but also a rigorous state of mind related with the A&P. There are many reasons as to why Sammy quit his job. The environment of John Updike’s story “A&P” is really important as to why Sammy quit his job. Sammy describes the A&P to be very boring. The anchor store is a common unit in modern society, so the reader can understand the conformity of the setting Sammy is describing.
Quitting his job was a spontaneous decision he made to protect his ego. Lengel calls out “you don 't want to do this” but Sammy keeps walking (Updike 5). Sammy’s stubbornness to admit he’s wrong can be interpreted by the quotation: “It 's true, I don ' t. But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it 's fatal not to go through with it” (Updike 5).
One inference to be made in the story is that the town that her family comes from is a small town where everybody knows each other and feels safe. “There, the friendly neighbors who knew us before we
Every character in works of literature are subjected to criticism and critique by its readers. In the short story, “A+P”, the protagonist, Sammy has been subjected to criticism for his actions of quitting his job, a reaction of seeing young ladies be disrespected in his workplace for wearing bathing suits. Many readers depict Sammy as immature and ignorant for quitting his job. However, the author, John Updike contradicts this assumption, portraying Sammy as a nineteen year old, who demonstrates strong morals, ambition, defiance, and a promising future, characterizing him not as an insolent teen but a developing young man.
In the NY Times article “Why the Beach Is a Bummer,” Roxane Gay exploits the beach and the ways it never actually lives up to the expectation many have when summer comes around. Gay speaks of her childhood on the beaches of Haiti and how beautiful it was, but how different it is in the United States because there's such a high expectation for the beach since many areas aren’t surrounded by them. “The beach becomes a kind of utopia — the place where all our dreams come true”(Gay), meaning the beach becomes romanticized by so many when in reality there’s just sand in places where it doesn't belong whether in your book or on your body. Gay expresses how soon after arriving at the beach boredom approaches from having nothing to do besides
The setting takes place in a suburban neighborhood like an area in the United States around the 1950's to 1960's. The mentalities of the people in the citizens reflect conformist tendencies of the community because they are negatively judgmental when they notice the girls in the story. The A&P store and customers of the story shape the time and setting to establish what is taking the place of the setting during that time. The A&P supermarket was arguably American's premier grocery store during the 1960s. Therefore, setting the scene of the A&P supermarket highlights the era of the 1960s.
This is where the dramatic conflicts comes into place because Sammy is upset that Langel has embrassed the young ladies. (Until almost the ending where Sammy confronts Lengel) Sammy does not stay quite and starts to stand up for these girls. Sammy is so displeased with Lengel's actions that he quits. Sammy quits his job because he wants to start living the life that the girls in the bathing suits were living.