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A & P By John Updike Setting Analysis

807 Words4 Pages

Every day we pass by men, women, boys, and girls of all different ages. We expect the adults to act mature like normal adults, and the kids to act like children. In the beginning of John Updike’s story “A&P”, the setting is in a store with an older woman watching to make sure that the cashier makes no mistakes with her order. However, when the cashier does mess up, the lady gets upset and warns the cashier of his mistake. After the woman leaves, the cashier goes back to looking at the girls, while other customers are now also starting to notice the girls. The young girls are dressed in two-piece bathing suits that are attracting a lot of attention. The girls go to check out, and are warned in a rude way by the manager to not come back into the store without the proper apparel being worn. Sammy views these people just like a teenager normally does, however if he was an adult he would have a different outlook on how the girls were dressed. Let’s start with the first customers that are talked about in the story. As the story begins, we are told about an older woman who intently watches to see if Sammy is going to ring up her order wrong or not. Sammy does, and is …show more content…

After the girls start to walk out, Sammy turns to Lengel and tells him “I quit” (152). After arguing with Lengel for a few minutes, Sammy tells him why he is frustrated. He states that “You didn’t have to embarrass them”, and Lengel replied with “I don’t think you know what you’re saying” (152). Lengel tries to talk Sammy out of quitting but it is a dead end, Sammy’s mind was already made up. Sammy felt like Lengel had done wrong by confronting the girls about the way that were dressed because Sammy was young, and immature so he didn’t feel like they were dressed inappropriately. However, Lengel was a mature adult and had a different outlook on how the girls should be dressed so they wouldn’t attract the wrong type of

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