In John Updike’s “A & A ; P” the chief character Sammy becomes the story’s storyteller. Sammy is a typical nineteen-year-old adult male working a deadening dead terminal occupation as a food market shop teller in a lower in-between category town. His lone function theoretical accounts are Stokesie a 22 year-old adult male making the same occupation as Sammy seeking to back up a household and Lengel his director who most likely some old ages before held the same business.
The entryway of the beautiful Queenie and her two friends break the rhythm of the stereotyped clients that Sammy sees day-to-day: “these are normally adult females with six kids and varicose venas mapping their legs and cipher including them could care less” ( p. 16 ). This is an oculus opener for Sammy who doesn’t truly step outside the boundaries of his deadening small community.
Sammy non merely notices Queenie as holding singular beauty but besides a little haughtiness about her: “she was demoing them { the other two misss } how to make it. walk slow and keep yourself straight” ( p. 15 ). Sammy can state that Queenie is from at least an upper center category household from the manner she speaks and the mode she carries herself in Sammy says that he “slid right down her voice into her life room” ( p. 17 ). Bing so covetous and in awe of Queenie. he felt as if he had to make something to gain a topographic point among those people in her societal category turn outing to himself and others he is better than the run-of-the-mine clients at the A & A; P. He quit his occupation non to affect Queenie but to go one of the societal elite.
While Sammy greatly admires Queenie’s beauty and elegant mode the ultra-conservative clients at the A & A ; P think rather otherwise about negatively: “when Queenie’s white shoulders dawned on them sort of dork or hop or hiccough but their eyes snapped back to their ain baskets and on they pushed” ( p. 15 ). Lengel upholding policy asks the misss to at least cover their shoulders as a mark of decency. Sammy’s concluding gesture of discontinuing can be seen as an act of rebelliousness and protest against corporate America. The rubric Updike has chosen for this narrative clearly represents corporate America being that during the clip this narrative was published A & A ; P’s were one of the largest food market shop concerns across the U. S. After Lengel’s insisting of the miss to be dressed decently Sammy non merely criticizes Lengel’s upholding of some kind of frock codification but he attacks policy in general: “That’s the policy for you. Policy is what the top bananas want” ( p. 17 ).
After discontinuing Sammy is non really confident in his determination: “my tummy sort of fell as I felt how hard the universe was traveling to be to me hereafter” ( p. 19 ). Lengel being a friend of Sammy’s parents impulse him non to discontinue. Populating in a typical little American town he might hold brought discredit upon himself and perchance his household. But Sammy felt as if he needed to stand by his beliefs and he did.
Throughout the narrative, Sammy is an ever-changing character. He is an immature adult male who we see really take an elephantine measure into manhood. After go forthing the shop he sees that the miss has already left and is able to look around at what chances are left for him outside of the A & A ; P universe. Sammy is an adult male now and will hold to cover with his determination and imperativeness forth toward the hereafter.
