A & P By John Updike Analysis

John Updike’s “A&P” is a short story that follows an encounter that a teenaged boy named Sammy has one day. On this unforgettable day, Sammy runs into some young ladies who are wearing nothing but bathing suits in the A&P grocery store. Being that this story is set in the 1950s, one can understand how this encounter could be considered surreal or unusual to the protagonist. John Updike utilizes his character Sammy’s age, physical appearance and personality in order to create a story about how desirable influences cause undesired consequences.
Being that the protagonist is the narrator of this story, the reader is not given an in-depth description of his physical appearance. The reader is able to pick up on a few character traits which ultimately …show more content…
He describes the woman at his register as “a witch about fifty” (Updike 163). His depiction makes the reader wonder if the woman is really fifty or whether he is merely making an assumption. It is clear that he is attracted to young girls like the ones in the bathing suits so it is unclear. He only describes the physical attributes of the two young ladies who come in to the store and nothing deeper. He describes one of the ladies in a bathing suit as “chunky,” another as having a “chubby berry-face,” and observes one girl as having “the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known were there” (Updike 164,167). This is because as a teenager he only sees females for what they are rather than who they are. The girls influence in Sammy’s decision quit his job shows how childlike a nineteen-year-old boy can be. Sammy was expecting to go out of his job after he quit and be looked at as a hero to the young ladies. However, instead they were gone and he realized he was not going to receive the fairy tale he hoped for. He could only focus on the superficial aspects of women and experienced lack of judgement because he is a naive