Essay Preview: A&P
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In “A&P”, John Updike tells the story of Sammy, an eighteen year old who we first encounter working the checkout line at the A&P, a small-town grocery north of Boston. As the story begins, three girls about Sammys age walk into the store wearing bathing suits. While this may have passed largely unnoticed in many other settings, it creates quite a commotion inside the old-town A&P, a store modeled in the dour, small-town-USA fashion. These bathing suits reveal not only the girls flesh, but also the rift between Sammys generation and the establishment of this puritan country town. This becomes evident when, at the end of the story, Sammy walks out on the job.
It would be a common misconception, however, to think that this brazen act had much at all to do with these three girls. Rather, Updike gives many clues throughout the text that show that the depth of Sammys malcontent had reached a critical mass long before these three girls walked through the door that summer afternoon, and a confrontation, both with the A&P and within himself, was imminent.
The stage for a major confrontation with the A&P was set early, as insights into the feelings that Sammy had toward the customers of the A&P are revealed. Of particular interest
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Sammy fears this transmutation, but knows it is at hand. This schism is further made apparent when Sammy is describing the sounds that the cash register makes in his head: “hello (bing) there, you (gung) hap-py pee-pul (splat)!”. He knows It is but a matter of time before the notion of walking out of a job on an idealistic whim seems as foreign as the sheep life does to him now. Sammy later refers to the “sheep pushing their carts down the aisle”, another distinct example of the alienation that Sammy feels between himself and the threadbare ways of this small town. After he walks out of the A&P for the last time, what should