The Theme Of Job In John Updike's A & P

In “A&P” by John Updike, the main character, Sammy decides to quit his job. Throughout the story Sammy reveals the reasons why he dislikes his job. A few reasons are: he becomes bored with his job, Sammy only working at this job because of his parents, and, finally he dislikes how a group of girls were being treated. Sammy soon grows tired of his summer job. He consistently sees the same customers, and his job requires the same rituals every day. Sammy gets so bored with customers he starts comparing their actions to animals, “The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle” (Updike 202), “ like scared pigs in chute”(Updike 204). Sammy gets so aggravated with a customer because she starts giving him trouble: “customer starts giving me hell” (Updike 201). This anger ultimately causes him to call this customer “cash-register-watchers” (Updike 201) and “a witch” (Updike 201).Every day Sammy hears the cash register, as a result he comes up with a song: “Hello (bing) there, you (gung) hap-py pee-pul (splat)!”(Updike 204). Sammy’s imagination helps him get through his long work days and also moderates clearly his boredom. The reason Sammy quits his job is because he wants to keep his parents …show more content…
In the group of girls, “Queenie” is the girl that Sammy likes, “She held her head so high her neck, coming up out of those white shoulders, looked kind of stretched, but I didn’t mind” (Updike 202). When, the girls come in one day, with just their bath suit Lengel sees this and does not like it he says, “Girls this isn’t the beach” (Updike 203). Lengel says this in front of everyone and Sammy sees this is embarrassing: Queenie “Queenie’s blush is no sunburn now” (Updike 203). When Sammy saw how embarrassed the girls were he tells Lengel “You didn’t have to embarrass them like that” (Updike 204). This incident was breaking point for Sammy to quit his