Literary Analysis Of A & P By John Updike

“If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done” (Jefferson, Thomas). The short story “A&P” by John Updike centers around how the life of Sammy dramatically changes when he tries to impress a girl. A summary of the story, three girls walk into A&P, where Sammy works, in bikinis. This causes the male employees to become distracted, Sammy singles out one of the girls and in his head calls her Queenie. The girls come to check out at Sammy’s cash register and the manager of the store calls out the girls in front of the whole store causing them embarrassment. Sammy tries to be Queenie’s hero by quitting his job, but she doesn’t turn around and walks out of the store, leaving Sammy without a job. Sammy …show more content…
After working at the supermarket for so long Sammy has come to an understanding of how much of mindless activity shopping is, until the girls dressed in bikinis walk around the aisles. He criticizes how mindless people are when they are shopping by referring to them as sheep or houseslaves, but he never groups the girls in with the other shoppers, “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… I bet you could set off dynamite in an A & P and the people would by and large keep reaching and checking the oatmeal off their lists and muttering “Let me see, there was a third thing, began with A, asparagus, no, ah, yes, applesauce!” or whatever it is they do mutter… A few houseslaves in pin curlers even looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure what they had seen [the girls in bikinis] was correct.” (Updike, pg.16). Later he feels sympathy for the girls as they talk to McMahon, “The girls had reached the meat counter and were asking McMahon something. He pointed, they pointed, and they …show more content…
19). At the beginning of the sentence Sammy still has hope that the girls stopped and are waiting for him to come and be their hero, but by the end he realizes that they aren’t and after this realization, Sammy starts to think about the consequences of his actions, “My stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.” (Updike, pg. 19). At this moment Sammy truly realizes what he has done by quitting his job, he has made the next steps in his life so much harder, he will probably have a hard time finding a new job and as a result of that he won’t have money to help support his family. By the end of the end of the story Sammy has changed as a character in result of three girls walking into A&P. His feelings for these girls have changed as a result of the plot and how the other characters have interacted with one another. These feelings are what drive his actions showing his complex personality. At first Sammy thinks the girls are airheads, then he feels sympathy for them, and finally he feels protective of the girls and wants to be their hero. The plot of the story develops Sammy as he goes through a day of work he will never