A & P Summary

The story “A & P” is about a boy named Sammy who is the cashier at a grocery store. What would usually be a normal day for him becomes something much bigger when three girls walk in only wearing bathing suits. This causes a problem, for they are against the dress policy and they are distracting for everyone there. The girls eventually get in trouble by the manager, and that’s when Sammy stands up for them and quits. Sammy’s attitude towards the girls changes significantly during the story.
The story starts with Sammy describing the girls. He quickly criticized them, slinging insults at them and labeling them as well. He made fun of their appearance and stated exactly why the girls aren’t attractive, and even went on to make fun of their intelligence. …show more content…
The girls leave, completely ignoring Sammy (most likely because he isn’t good looking). He realizes that they left, but he thought to himself “[I]t seems to me that once you begin a gesture it’s fatal not to go through with it”, so he continues to quit. He then leaves work (as he no longer works there) and goes to search for the girls, but they are nowhere in sight. This is a very big difference from how he acted in the beginning, as he went from insulting them to literally putting his job on the line when one of them blushed. He quickly became obsessed with them, which is shown when he suddenly feels an extreme amount of pity and sympathy for Queenie (who is really a stranger that he gave a name), and it’s also shown when he refers to the three as “my girls”.
Sammy changes significantly throughout the story of “A & P”. Much is shown about the main character, as not only does it show his thoughts, but it also shows his personality and how it changes. He went from disliking the three strangers in bathing suits to giving up everything for them in a very short period of time. This shows a lot about his personality and how it has developed over the course of the