John Updike's A & P

Are girls more important than keeping your job? Sammy thinks so. In John Updike's story, "A+P," a character named Sammy quits his job in the pursuit of girls, and Updike reveals Sammy's character by showing his attitudes, his actions, and his observations of others.

The character Sammy's attitude reveals many things about his character. Sammy wrote "do you really think it's a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?" The narrator was referring to women's minds in this statement, and this shows that he has a superior attitude toward women and that he thinks himself more intelligent than women. The narrator also wrote that "I began to feel sorry for them, they couldn't help it," when referring to the girls, again showing his belief that he is superior to the girls and if they were only more intelligent they would not have made the mistake of coming into the A+P in just a bikini. As with his attitude, the narrator's actions also reveal more about his character. …show more content…
The narrator wrote "'so I say 'I quit' to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they'll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero," revealing that he wants the girls to think that he is standing up for them, but in actuality he is just trying to get some sympathy from the girls so he can hang out with them. The narrator also wrote that "my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter," when he quit his job, showing that he began to feel like he made a big mistake after realizing he had just lost his job due to girls that he would most likely never see again. The narrator's observations of others also shows more about his