Sammy In John Updike's A & P

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Sammy, a nineteen-year-old boy who is a cashier at a local A & P grocery smack dab in the middle of a conservative New England town. On a hot summer day, three adolescent girls enter the store wearing only their bathing suits, captivating Sammy’s attention with rich detail. He describes the appearance and actions, observing that their remote and bizarre behavior radiates upper-class lifestyle that far differs from the stores everyday customers. As the girls prepare to checkout at Sammy’s aisle, the store manager, Lendel, addresses them for what he perceives as their indecent appearance. Hoping the girls will notice his chivalrous gesture, Sammy shortly quits his job in protest. Realizing that he might later regret his impulsive action, Sammy, …show more content…
When the three girls walk in the A&P, we see how Sammy informs us how the girls walked against usual traffic (not that they had any signs or anything), shortly after we see how these girls did more than just that, they completely changed the norm of the store. The tension arises not because the girls are in bathing suits, but because they're in bathing suits in a place where people don't wear bathing suits. They've crossed a line about what's socially acceptable. Sammy obviously finds the girls physically alluring, but he's also attracted by their rebellion. He doesn't want to be like the "sheep" he makes such fun of, the customers who are befuddled when the girls enter the store. From the time, the girls enter the grocery store to the moment they leave we can see changes in Sammy. This realization is why these three girls seem stimulating to him. They are different and do not seem to follow any set path, they live in the “now”. At first, he sees only the physicality of the girls and what they are wearing, to then shortly naming them. As the story progresses, Sammy notices the interactions between the girls, and he even determines the hierarchy of the small …show more content…
Sammy contemplates that the only difference between them is Stokesie’s family, but in fact Stokesie is aware that his family relies on his job, therefore, he performs the best he can. He could not afford to make a gesture like Sammy, although Sammy himself sees it more as a lack of courage. To Sammy, Stokesie represents what he does not want to be. Sammy does not want to stay at the grocery store and work his way to manager. Sammy has now lost his job and didn’t leave with the girls as their “hero” he’d imagine he would be. This shows how a well-intentioned act backfired on him, this climax of the story shows that Sammy indeed is a teenager and his thoughts and actions have reflected that. Sammy is now forced to realize that actions have consequences and that growing up means taking
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