Summary Of A & P By John Updike

The story A&P by John Updike relays a story scene that takes place in a 1950’s grocery store. In the story Queenie, along with her two sidekicks Big Tall Gooney Gooney and Plaid, enter the grocery store wearing nothing but a bathing suit. Once they’re ready to checkout, the store manager, Lengel, asks them to leave his store and return with less revealing clothing. Throughout the course of the story, readers see everything through the cashier Sammy. The audience is able to identify many character traits and motivations through the way he describes what’s happening around him. Through Sammy’s thoughts, we’re able to identify his length of employment, and how his boredom motivates him by wanting a brighter future for himself.
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Without walking through the aisle, most people wouldn’t be able to name every type of food found within a row of shelving. In order for Sammy to remember each food found in each row, he has to have worked in this grocery store for a while. He also refers to the customers in a negative fashion more than once. Sammy says, “The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle” (235). He again states “All this while, the customers had been showing up with their carts but, you know, sheep, seeing a scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie” (237) and “I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through” (238). When Sammy refers to the customers in this manner, it tells the audience he isn’t only annoyed with the job itself but also the customers. He has overstayed this employment and although Sammy is paid for working, he no longer finds interest in his employment. The audience is not only shown how annoyed and bored Sammy has become with this job, but also the length of time he has been employed which could be one of the reasons for his impetuous

In addition, Sammy lives in a small town, so news spreads quickly so all local businesses will hear what he’s done. This will in turn, make it harder for Sammy to become employed again all because he didn’t think before acting. Another example would be when Sammy quits his job in order to show Queenie and her friends that Lengel mistreated them. He also tries to be the heroic figure for them. In paragraph 22 he says, “The girls, and who’d blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say “I quit” to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero” (237). When Sammy quits his job at A&P, he first feels as though the girls will see his brave act and triumph but sadly, the girls are long gone when Sammy exits his recent termination. Because of the the lack of consideration towards his job, he is now jobless, and won’t be able to use the store as a reference moving forward to other employments making it harder for himself to become employed in the