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Mature In A & P By John Updike

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The time to Mature As the story of “A&P” unfolds, readers can see a change in the main character from the start of the story to the end. John Updike’s main character Sammy in “A&P” conveys the theme of growing up through making decisions based on how others are treated, and what he wants for himself in order to mature and find his identity. Throughout the beginning of the story readers can see that Sammy is still a very immature nineteen year old because he easily gets distracted by three girls who enter into his job in bathing suits. “The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece”. (Updike 1). Here readers can see that Sammy is paying more attention to the girls than his job because he gets descriptive in …show more content…

At this point in the story, Sammy has already announced that he quits, in hopes that the girls would hear him before they quickly left the store. Sammy also show signs of maturing when his manager says “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your mom and dad” (Updike 7). Sammy replies “It’s true, I don’t. But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture its fatal not to go through with it.” (Updike 7). Sammy knows his quick decision in quitting his only source of income will hurt his parents, but he realizes making choices whether good or bad is a part of growing up, despite how his parents will feel or react. Lengel says “You’ll feel this for the rest of your life,” (Updike 7) to threaten and possibly intimated Sammy. Here we also see Sammy’s manager, Lengel giving him another chance to think about the decision he is making, but still Sammy does not change his mind because he has already made his decision, and no one will change his mind. We see how Sammy grows up the most when he ends the story by saying “my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter (Updike 8). He knows the world will not be easy after his decision, but he understands that it is a part of growing up and finding who he is

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John Updike’s A&P is composed of detailed imagery. Updike paints a portrait of each character which allows the reader to see through the eyes of Sammy. Sammy describes the physical appearances of the girls and their behavior (such as how they walk) to describe their personalities. In the story, Sammy describes the Queen, “She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and making their shoulders round. She didn’t look around, not this queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on these long prima-donna legs.”

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Nevertheless, the girls are gone and he is alone facing his problem in reality. However, he does not regret quitting. “Now here comes to the sad part of the story[quitting], at least my family says it’s sad, but I don’t think it’s so sad myself” (748). Sammy knows in order to defend for something more valuable, he must give up something which also implies his growth as a young adult. Through the conflicts between the characters, Updike implies his protest for personal

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Sammy is characterized by being your typical teenage boy. In this sentence and throughout the paragraph John Updike reader experience a lot of different emotions of love and romantics. Updike 's character narration is mainly written in a realistic and simple sentence structure. The text 's artistic value is based on the style of the story which includes author 's use of sentence structure, word choices, and sentence arrangement. All these things coincide together to bring about different humor, and most importantly the

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