John Updike's short story “A&P” explores teenage rebellion and coming-of-age, through multiple stylistic elements such as symbolism, metaphor, and irony; Updike can portray his theme of the consequences of making decisions based on impulse and youthful idealism specifically through the character Sammy. The “A&P'' grocery shop is a particularly effective symbol in this scenario. The narrator, Sammy, who works at the shop, has both a physical and symbolic role in the story. In addition to Sammy's workplace, the store represents society's expectations of conformity. Other customers are described as “sheep” who came in wiping their hands on their skirts as though the shelves had been dusting themselves since the last time they were in.
In John Updike’s A&P, Sammy is portrayed as an arrogant character who desires women as exhibited through the school of psychoanalysis. He observes the behaviour of customers and draws from his experience as a cashier in order to characterize and scrutinize them. His attitude towards the customers leads him to believe that he possesses more power than the customers, assuming it challenges that of Lengel’s until he meets the girls. Sammy believes that he knows everything about the customers at A&P due to the behavioural observance of customers as a result of his experience as a cashier.
In the story “A&P,” Updike communicates Sammy’s imprisonment though his location within the grocery store. In the first few sentences, Updike places “[Sammy] in the third check-out slot, with [his] back to the door, so [he doesn’t] see [the girls] until they’re over by the bread” (Updike 17). The physical isolation of the ‘check-out slot’ combined with Sammy’s inability to see outside demonstrates how he is incapable of seeing the outside world, let alone reaching its freedom. The act of Sammy noticing the girls further attests to his mental confinement; as instead of thinking of the store in terms of layout, he thinks in terms of ‘bread’ (17). His habit of thinking in terms of products signifies how the grocery store is where he spends the majority of his time, further alluding to Sammy’s physical confinement within the
In the short story of A&P, the first-person point of view brings advantages and limitations in which the author, John Updike, could tell this story. The story is told through the eyes of the character named Sammy. Using first person narrative through Sammy’s eyes allows the reader to see how Sammy felt about the young girls that were in the grocery store. John Updike described the way Sammy, the main character, felt about his job. Updike also described how the workers felt about the manager of the store.
Consequences To The Wind In “A&P”, a short story by John Updike we meet Sammy, an eighteen-year-old who lives and works in a small conservative Massachusetts town. Sammy is the main character in the coming of age story about innocence, maturity and standing up against social injustices. He works in the local grocery store, the A&P, which is managed by the conservative Sunday school teacher, Lengel.
3 The story of “A&P” by John Updike adopts the uses of figurative language to embellish the critical moments of transitions of people’s lives, particularly in the life of Sammy. Updike utilizes crafts of plot, character, setting, point of view, theme, and symbol to constitute the story, and to project the idea of "life passages. " Also, Sammy undergoes a series of events that enables him to transition as a person in his life. 3
Although both “A&P” and “Miss Brill” focus on the protagonists’ desire to escape restrictive societies, “A&P” proposes that restraint can extract courage and confrontation leading to change, while “Miss Brill” suggests that such restrictions result in avoidance, retreat, and further self-confinement. Updike and Mansfield both set up their stories where the influential external forces are introduced to Sammy and Miss Brill, who start out in undesirable confinements, leading these forces to catalyze each characters’ initial escape from societal constraints. Sammy’s co-worker in A&P serves as a constant reminder of what he will become in the near future if he stays confined in the A&P store. Sammy observes, “Stokesie [is] married, with two babies chalked up on his
Sammy quickly becomes faced with some life-changing choices he is forced make. Sammy is involved in multiple internal and external conflicts. Like most protagonists in short stories, they face multiple conflicts.
As such, "A&P" and "Sonny's Blues" serve as powerful literary examples that dive into the intricacies of human identity and the ways in which individuals strive to break free from societal constraints to assert their individuality. In John Updike's "A&P," the main character, Sammy, impulsively quits his job at a grocery store after defending three girls in bathing suits who are reprimanded for their attire. However, as Sammy searches for the girls outside the store, he realizes the potential consequences of his impulsive action. The grocery store represents a commodified society where people's desires are determined by their purchasing ability.
Caring - about people, about things, about life - is an act of maturity. Sammy, the narrator in the first story narrative “A&P,” demonstrates the development of his maturity through the actions he displays by standing up for the girls who were humiliated by a grocery store manager. Updike’s short story, demonstrates how youth display rebellion and immaturity due to their everyday struggles. While some people may seem to take a more mature approach in their development process, everyone matures in a different way. People want to be unique and accepted in their own way which explains Sammy’s actions.
In John Updike’s short story, “A&P”, Updike develops Sammy as a sympathy, naïve worker who resigns his clerk position at the grocery store as a mere gesture to the three young girls. Simply to display this “heroinism” for them. In John Updike’s short story, “A&P,” Updike employs the first person point of view to convey Sammy as a foolish character, for this technique allows the reader to understand the true thoughts and intentions behind Sammy’s actions. Throughout the story, it is evident that Sammy’s decision to leave his job at the A&P is not a decision made out of bravery, but rather impetuousness and lack of forethought.
In John Updikes “A&P” story, I don’t feel that Sammy quits for just one reason—I also feel his actions where less of trying to impress the girls and more of his attempt to break the mold or cycle that he feels he has become apart of. When referencing the store, or the town and those who are part of the story Sammy references people as ‘sheep’ which is often used as a way to describe people who lack imagination, who follow/copy/mimic someone else. You hear that same tone as he describes the store and his town (cash-register-watchers, freeloaders, Big Tall Goony-Goony, etc) in somewhat of fantasy/imaginative manner as if the only way he can cope through the daily rituals of life, which has gotten to be mundane, is to narrate the events of his
The beginning lines of “A&P” give little indication of the impending metamorphosis of Sammy. Written in first person limited, the reader views the environs, including the characters and speculations
“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.
In his short story "A&P" writer John Updike makes a relatable story for those of this day and age, that viably manages the theme of individualism through his depiction of the young girls and the seemingly underrated hero, Sammy. This story takes place at a more conservative time in our nation (1961), when we were on the brink of a liberation for women. Some of the descriptive words are a bit more, shall I say, colorful than others. The author does end up redeeming himself at the end and the story does not finish as I had thought it would from the first few lines. Updike portrays the girls, while rather judgmentally, as youthful, pronounced young women who don't necessarily conform to the classic standards of a town stuck in the more distant past.
