Reading Journal - Essay Example

+ The short story A&P by John Updike tell a story of a young man working as a clerk in a supermarket. His name is Sammy and he is 19 years old. In his encounter at work, he comes across three women who come to shop for snacks. The girls are in their bathing suits and when they enter the grocery shop, they attract the attention of everyone in the supermarket from their dressing. This is seen from the reaction their entrance causes to the people present at the supermarket. To Sammy their manner of dressing is appealing and he is infatuated to one of the women whom he nicknames Quinie, probably the most beautiful of them all.

The story continues when Lengel, who is the manager at the supermarket, comes and confronts the girls on their dressing at that time. Apart from being a manager, we are told he teaches at Sunday school to mean that he is a man of God. He condemns their dressing and even insists that it is against the policy of the supermarket to dress that way. That kind of dressing was meant for the beach. Because of this confrontation, Sammy sees this as an embarrassment to the women and in the juncture quits his job, and downs his work tools.

This gesture is not noticed by any of the women. Lengel tries to persuade Sammy that it was going to be hard for him to without a job but he listens to none of that and walks out of the supermarket.This story is rich in themes that are outright from the events of the story. One of such themes is that of growing up in life. The story is told of a young man who is in his adolescent age of 19 years. The boy, Sammy, experiences adolescent changes and attraction to the opposite sex. Both Sammy and Stokesie react to the beauty of the women in the supermarket.

They react to their appearance in a sensual manner by observing their moves and body features. The women are also in their youth probably the same age as that of Sammy. They dress in a way that the old like Lengel deem indecent but Sammy sees nothing wrong with it. This is shown by the event where Sammy wants to quit his job because he purports that the manager has embarrassed the girls.These issues happen to the youth as they grow up. They fail to distinguish love and relationship issues and end up making choices that are regrettable in a way.

Sammy is infatuated with one of the women whom he nicknames as Queenie and he literally stares at her and even gets jealous of the way the woman blushes at Lengel’s confrontations. He is so crazy about the woman that when they have been “embarrassed” he gets annoyed and quits his job at the store without thinking of the consequences, which the manager is warning of him.This shows the mistakes that the adolescents do as teenagers. The adolescents also tend not to listen to reason from the old, because they tend to think they know much which is always not the case and they end up making mistakes just as Sammy did.

Sammy would listen to none of what Lengel would say to him. He came to realize after the women were gone and did not realize his effort for them.This theme is meaningful in that it tells the importance of proper guidance of our youth by the society. These are people growing up and they face various challenges in their interaction with the immediate environment. They are the holder of the generations to come and if they are not well brought up, with skill that will make them make the right decisions then there is a problem in future.

They are a part of our society that needs help to be good people. Therefore, theme is very important to the real life of our teenage children. They need guidance into the right direction and these calls for the effort of both the parents and the teachers who should have an upper hand in molding our children into a better generation. This process of guiding our teenager in the right direction should be devoid of name-calling and judgmental sentiments, as this is a critical moment for the adolescents and they are very sensitive, both at home and school.