Rebellion In John Updike's A & P

In society, there are several rules that need to be considered. However, there are some who try to challenge the system. In the short story “A&P” by John Updike, the main character Sammy is a nineteen-year-old boy who works as a cashier in a small grocery store. After seeing a couple girls walk in who seem to be rebellious in many aspects, Sammy seems to change his ways to try to impress them and be seen as what we call a “hero”. Throughout the story, we see how the aspect of rebellion is demonstrated through the social background of the main character. Sammy runs a little protest against the differences in class and the author represents this using multiple literary devices such as plot and language. The story maintains a first-person narration so that we can get to know the character well. The way that the story is written, John Updike seems to want the readers to question Sammy’s motivation and behavior along with the reasons behind it. By reading the story we see that Sammy is delighted by seeing the amount of freedom the three girls being in with them, it’s as if he wants to get a taste of the …show more content…
By the time he finished quitting his job, The girls that Sammy was attempting to impress and be like were nowhere to be seen, they had left the store by the time he was done. Unfortunately, Sammy never saw the girls again and the girls were never able to see his attempts in being one of them. After this incident it seems that the author wanted to teach a lesson of being rebellious, and how it beings the feel of guilt by the end. One should not feel the need to break social norms just because he or she is in a lower class than others. Many people are influenced by the illusion of freedom. Towards the end Sammy says “my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” (Updike 101). Proving that Sammy was a little confused as to what he would do