Immaturity In A & P By John Updike

The short story “A & P” by John Updike is set between 1947 and 1991 during the Cold war and a period when women were generally objectified. The protagonist of the story, Sammy, is a typical teenager boy with a part time job as a check out clerk at a grocery store called A & P and has a fondness for attractive young girls. The plot begins when the presence of three girls in bathing suits came in the grocery store intensely sidetracking Sammy and his co-worker away from their work. Due to enough distraction, the manager, Lengel, recognizes the delay in the till and hastily reacts on the problem by embarrassing and shaming the girls for their attire. Although Sammy shows that he disagrees with Lengel’s treatment of the girls by quitting his job,

To emphasize, Sammy displayed several signs of immaturity throughout the story. He shows his immaturity with his sexist attitude towards women by questioning if they really had a mind or if it is “just a little buzz like a bee in a glassjar.” Not only does his sexism show his immaturity, but also the way he refers to his customers as sheeps, house slaves, witch and even food products. Furthermore, he had the chance to reassess his decision of quitting his job and is immature to go through with it just because he thinks that it is fatal if he does not (Updike). Nevertheless, Sammy seems to redeem himself by growing up and exhibiting good morals by making a sacrifice of defending the girls against Lengel. Although this may be true, this conflict between Sammy and Lengel serves to further enhance the fact that Sammy is yet to grow because his act of righteousness were hardly heroic than he wanted it to be for he was only doing it in hopes of getting recognition from the girls. In fact, after defending the girls and quitting the job, he goes to “look around for [the] girls, but [they are] gone…” and adds in an “of course” statement as if he is disappointed. With this in mind, the main conflict succeeds in showing that Sammy is a dynamic character by putting him in a state of epiphany. A state where he recognizes that he is forced to

Throughout the story, Sammy is comfortable behind his mocking attitude for it enables him to feel self-confident by degrading others such as the costumers as well as his co-worker, Stokesie, who Sammy thinks is foolish for aiming to be a manager one day. It is also safe to assume that he is degrading Lengel by thinking that he is just another worker with a special “door marked MANAGER behind [it] which he hides [in] all day” (). For these reasons, Sammy is not self-confident at all for he has to lower others in order to feel superior. As a matter of fact, his lack of self-confidence is easily exposed when he felt the need to sacrifice his job in order to get recognized by the girls. This decision is also ironic for it represents that in the eyes of the girls, he must have just seem like Stokesie and all the others that he has been degrading. With all things considered, the backfire of his sense of superiority with the girls changes how he perceives the world and his place in