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Summary Of A & P By John Updike

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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. Most of the information …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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In John Updike’s short story “A&P,” Sammy is the narrator and cashier at the grocery story A&P. The author uses dynamic characters with immensely different personalities to portray conformity and rebellion in our society. Through out the story Sammy challenges conformity and social norms at his work place for personal reasons. Sammy is very bitter character and taken as a realist which fuels the story. Queenie, a rebel against conformity, sparks Sammy’s emotions after the way she is treated by his boss Langel when she walks into the grocery store with nothing but a bikini covering her skin.

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1001 Words | 5 Pages

Sammy took the job, so he can help his family. Throughout the story, you can tell that Sammy is unhappy with his decision to take the job because " he can't remember" if he ringed the costumer's crackers or not. As mentioned before, people sometimes do things that make them unhappy because they want to please someone they love. Sammy took the job at "A&P" because he had to help his family, he was their provider. Towards the end of the story, Sammy made another decision.

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As Janie grows tired of the business end of the store she finds joy in the people that come. One day, Janie and Jody were sitting on the porch witnessing a humorous conversation between two men. Before she knew it, Janie was order back into the shop when she heard Jody tell her, “‘I god, Janie,’ Starks said impatiently, ‘why don’t you go on and see whut Mrs. Bogle want? Whut you waitin’ on?’ Janie wanted to hear the rest of the play-acting and how it ended, but she got up sullenly and went inside” (Hurston 70).

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Quitting his job was a spontaneous decision he made to protect his ego. Lengel calls out “you don 't want to do this” but Sammy keeps walking (Updike 5). Sammy’s stubbornness to admit he’s wrong can be interpreted by the quotation: “It 's true, I don ' t. But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it 's fatal not to go through with it” (Updike 5).

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A&P: The Perspective of Sammy “A&P” by John Updike tells the story of Sammy, a teenage boy working at a grocery store, when he sees three girls dressed in swimsuits enter. Quickly, Sammy becomes infatuated with the leading girl whom he dubs “Queenie”. Eventually, the girls are accosted by the manager for dressing inappropriately and Sammy quits in both an act of rebellion and wanting the appreciation of the girls. All throughout the story Sammy’s sarcastic and inquisitive nature comes out leading to a distinct voice and thought process the reader follows giving the reader a very opinionated view of all the characters and action in the story.

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This ego that Lengel has makes Sammy not want to be around his job in order to stay away from his manager.

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The story takes place on a hot, summer day at a grocery store called the “A&P”. The protagonist is a nineteen year old male cashier by the name of Sammy. The central conflict occurs when Sammy watches three girls in bathing suits enter into the store to buy some herring snacks. Sammy gleefully watches them and gets attracted to the middle girl, “Queenie”, eventually being infatuated for her.

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1852 Words | 8 Pages

The setting takes place in a suburban neighborhood like an area in the United States around the 1950's to 1960's. The mentalities of the people in the citizens reflect conformist tendencies of the community because they are negatively judgmental when they notice the girls in the story. The A&P store and customers of the story shape the time and setting to establish what is taking the place of the setting during that time. The A&P supermarket was arguably American's premier grocery store during the 1960s. Therefore, setting the scene of the A&P supermarket highlights the era of the 1960s.

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John Updike's short story "A&P" is about a 19-year-old boy “Sammy” who is going through changes in his life, and has to make crucial decisions that are going to affect his job and his future in the long run. The story is set in an A&P grocery store, in a town north of Boston, and begins with Sammy’s description of the three girls that enter the store. Sammy decides to quit his job in order to impress the girl “Queenie.” Unfortunately, his gentlemanly act goes unnoticed by Queenie and her friends, and he has no choice but to face the consequences of his action. The author of the story clarifies that Sammy’s immaturity comes from his judgmental attitude, sexist beliefs, and disrespectful attitude.

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“A&P” by John Updike is a short story expressing the issues of female objectification and degradation in society by following a young A&P employee’s views (Sammy) as they change through experiences second hand. Sammy goes from stereotyping objectifier to a form of a public defender, standing up for girls who can’t really do so for themselves. Sammy initially characterizes and describes all of the people in the store based on their looks and his initial opinion of them, rather than waiting to make judgements based on their personality, or not at all. He is very critical of looks, and is judgmental about why and how they look or act the way they do.

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692 Words | 3 Pages

In the short story, “A&P” by John Updike, Updike narrates through the point of view of a 19 year old cashier. Three girls enter the supermarket that the young man works at, in bathing suits, although they catch the attention of the cashier, the manger disapproves of their dress code in the store. The supermarket plays a vital role in Updike demonstrating the rebellion of the younger generation, by the girls not dressing conservative in public, the cashier’s fascination of their bodies, and the older manager disapproval. The first demonstration Updike used to show the teens rebellion was when the girls walked into the supermarket in just their bathing suits. The reaction of the young cashier and his coworker showed how unusual it was for girls to walk around in public with their bikinis on.

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1149 Words | 5 Pages

John Updike’s story “A&P” is a literary masterpiece that reveals the expectations of a man at the prime of his youth and an old manager in a society that is seemingly so strict on social ideals. Told from the first person point of view, the story is a strong way to show what the character Sammy learns in the shop as he develops his personality traits through the buyers and the manager. Written in the present simple tense, the story proves to be more appropriate for oral presentation. The purpose of this essay is to present a critical analysis of the personality traits of the character Sammy. In order to present the character traits analysis, the essay contends that a person is described through what they say, do, and think, what others think or say about them, or how the author describes them.

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755 Words | 4 Pages

In “A&P” the narrator is Sammy, a nineteen-year-old clerk at the “A&P” grocery store. Sammy narrates his experience with three young women, when they walked into the store wearing only the bathing suits. Sammy, despite his boss’s order to scold the girls for entering the store dressed inappropriately, he decides to disobey him and eventually quits his job. The story seems to be about the prejudice around the human’s body and its exposure. Sammy is in the middle of this revolution.

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850 Words | 4 Pages

This helps the reader visualize a sarcastic and frustrated cashier ringing up an impatient customer. Sammy refers to the customers as “sheep” in paragraph five because of their conformity and slow mosey throughout the store also making the three girls stick out more. In paragraph 2, Sammy refers to one of the girls as a “queen” using a direct metaphor as if she truly was a Queen. This reinforces Sammy’s observant mind and way he breaks down each girl. Whether his opinion was positive or negative, deducing women by their looks and staring at their chests, “this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light,”(3), does nothing but further supplement the idea that these three girls are being watched just because of their choice in attire.

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1085 Words | 5 Pages

The Impact of Setting in John Updike’s “A&P” “The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle--the girls were walking against the usual traffic (not that we have one-way signs or anything)--were pretty hilarious” (Updike 651). As an average cashier at a plain A&P store in the middle of town, the protagonist Sammy is unaccustomed to customers in provocative attire. Queenie and her two friends (one chunky, one tall) are outcast in a setting of tremendous social conformity, and quickly catch Sammy’s watchful eye with their unexpected bikinis. Unabashed in teenage ignorance, these three girls continue to shop for herring snacks, unaware that consequence is at their doorstep.

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