Comparing The Protagonist In John Updike's A & P

In John Updike’s short story “A&P”, the protagonist, Sammy works as a grocery store clerk. In the story, Sammy finds girls with bathing suit on walking around the store. Throughout the story, he, judge about girls behavior, actions, and thoughts. By doing that, he often makes derogatory comments. He thinks girls cannot stand up for themselves and always need men’s assistance to achieve a task. His action shows that he is a sexist who thinks that men are better and stronger than woman and women are there to appease dominant male who can stand up for women.
This story takes place in a northen Boston near the ocean. Throughout the story there are 3 girls in the story. When those three came in to the store with only bathing suits on, Sammy immediately look at their appearances and evaluate them. For sure, Sammy found one of the girls to be especially attractive and names her Queenie as this quote supports “She was the queen.she kind …. other two peeking around” (Updike 26), “She just walked straight on … these long white prima-donna legs”(Updike 28). From here, the protagonist degrade other two girls on the side of Queenie just because of their appearances are no better than that of Queenie. Without even considering about their inner quality, Sammy thinks that Queenie is the only person that suits him and shows that …show more content…
In this quote Sammy compares women minds to glass of jar with bees “ you never know ...do you really think it’s a mind in there..,little buzz like a bee in a glass jar”(Updike 30). He questions women’s mental capability to think as he uses the word “little buzz like a bee”. Emphasizing that women are dependent from men and they always need men to think properly, Sammy debase women as if their only reason for walking around with bathing suit on in the grocery store is to entice others which shows that he has extremely biased