John Updike A & P Conflict

A&P by John Updike

In John Updike’s short story “A & P”, Sammy, the cashier, experiences more than a typical work day in a grocery store. Three girls come in to the store shopping in their bathing suits to pick up a few items. As the male employees are enjoying the beautiful view of the young girls, Lengel, the manager authoritatively tells the girls that their attire is improper. Although Sammy knows he is an employee of A & P, he also understands that he is a 19-year old boy who is suddenly offended in the way the girls are being treated. 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.

For the most part, he sees them all the same and even mocks them throughout the story. As he narrates, he describes one of the customers by saying “She’d been watching cash registers for fifty years and probably never seen a mistake before” (Updike 18). Sammy sees himself as an ordinary young man who is getting a bit distracted by a few beautiful half dressed girls entering the store. Being a young 19-year old man, Sammy expresses his resentment towards the everyday customers that he feels look down on him. He feels like some of these customers have nothing else to do each day besides harassing the younger generation for their mistakes in life. Although Sammy is a cashier at the grocery store, he does not appreciate feeling like he is beneath the shoppers that frequent the A&P. From the way Sammy describes the customers, it is evident that he feels like they are all “sheep” to society by acting in the manner they are expected to daily. In fact, Sammy is actually looking down on them since they are programmed by society to do what they do and act how they act. Sammy does not want to end up like the people he sees every day in the A& P grocery store and makes that clear to the readers. By the sarcastic tone Sammy uses while narrating, it shows that he is not happy with his job as a cashier, so he is easily annoyed by all the people he deals with it while at

It is obvious that at first sight, he views girls in the same way as the other shoppers view him; beneath him. Sammy enjoys gawking at the beautiful girls and their bodies, but is not sure they have any intelligence to them. The lack of intelligence does not bother Sammy because he is more interested in their physical appearance. Although, his descriptions of the young girls throughout the story seem demeaning towards females, he actually ends up glorifying them for few different