Essay On Why Does Sammy Quit His Job

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Sammy’s desire
The A&P by ? is one that people have many different opinions on why the main character Sammy quit his job. For example, author David Peck has many different reasons on what made Sammy do the things he did. It’s also possible that it has been building for a while now and his manager just pushed him over the top. But my belief is that he quit his job rashly because he is attracted to them and wanted to impress them. He is not really thinking with his brain when he quit his job, he isn’t really thinking at all.
The story takes place at a grocery store in the summer and the main character, Sammy, is at his job. Sammy is a typical male teenager who is interested in the opposite sex, so when the group of girls walks in, it is …show more content…

“Short as it is, the story has a number of classical overtones. Like the hero in an Arthurian legend, Sammy is on a romantic quest: In the name of chivalry, he acts to save the “queen” (and her two consorts) from the ogre Lengel. At the same time, Sammy is tempted by the three Sirens from “the Point” and rejects his mentor (or older guide), Lengel, to follow them; from this perspective, Sammy’s initiation comes when he recognizes the futility of this quest and returns to Lengel, who presents him with the truth. Such mythical possibilities point up the richness of John Updike’s prose. There are also sociopsychological implications in this initiation story. Although Sammy defends the three girls against the provincial morality of Lengel and the town (“Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldn’t help it”), it is only Sammy who holds to the outmoded romantic code; the three girls ignore him. Sammy, in other words, is a working-class “hero” defending a privileged upper class that does not even acknowledge his existence. In the medieval romance, all the characters were aristocratic. Here Sammy loses his job because of romantic notions to which only working-class characters, apparently, still …show more content…

The girls showed Sammy what he could have been doing instead of working, I am sure swimming is in his mind after they walked in. Not only does he not like working there, but it is also the summer which is the perfect time to hang out and not have any responsibilities. So because of not only working during the summer and working for a boss he doesn’t really like, Sammy might have wanted to quit for a while now and his boss disrespecting the girls might have just put him over the