A&P by john updike - Research Paper Example

Sammy is a juvenile who progresses with his emotions and collapses in his judgment and deeds. The story is an attempt to pencil in the then society and its changing attitudes. Updike consciously set the characters into types who can act beyond the conventions. Sammy, the teenager and the protagonist of the story, is a close observer and copycat. The girl Queenie as named by Sammy is followed by two girls; among them Queenie gets the attention of Sammy. She is pretty, confident and brave. The youthful Sammy watches closely the girls who move here and there in their bathing suits.

He could explain vividly the external appearance of the three: “first was in the placid green two pieces … she was a chunky kid …” – this shows his immaturity. The actions and moves of these girls stir the mind of Sammy. Sammy notices, “She held her head so high her neck coming out of those white shoulders” (Updike 734). He makes guesses about their personalities. They create their own world inside, and they get the attention of all. Sammy was joked at the way he looks at the girls by Stokesie who is working with him at A&P.

Updike slowly delineates the inner feelings of the teenager. Sammy also wants to be brave enough to break the societal conventions. The swirl in him was the outcome of the realization that he also wish to become one like the girls. The way in which he describes the young girls shows his childishness: “in the placid green two pieces,” “sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it,” etc. Thus, Updike uses Sammy’s “unromantic descriptive powers to expose his boyish nature” (Uphaus 373).

The actions and expressions of the girls in the swimming suits arouse in the underdeveloped mind of Sammy a strong feeling of likeliness, a feeling to be one among them, to get the attention of them and a sensation to support them. The insecurity and inferiority in working in such a low place was always hounding him even in the presence of those girls. He thinks that the place is not suitable for a person like him. So Sammy takes the side of the girls when they are harassed for coming to the store in bathing suits.

Sammy is able to recognize the difference between the regulars coming to store and engaging in the same actions of going around with their lists and the girls. It seems to be something refreshing to all the members of the store. The path they go and the move that they make inside the store match with Sammy’s internal wishes. When Lingel embarrassed the girls, Sammy supports them, and when they leave, he also says “I quit” showing his apron. The growth from an adolescent to a man who is able to make decisions of his own is evident from his thought pattern.

Nathan Hatcher says “Had he taken the time think over his actions before he carried out, he would have seen how foolish he was being and would not have gone through with them” (38). Sammy quit his job because he also wants to be a person like that of the girls. He may not wish to get one, but the fascinating way in which they move, the freedom they enjoy due to breaking the customs of the society come up in his mind. As he expects, the quitting does not make an effect in the girls. They did not acknowledge his departure.

He wished a lot to show his face to Queenie. But Lingel says to him “