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 Sammy's 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 Sammy's 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 Sammy's malcontent had reached a critical mass long before these three girls walked through the door that summer afternoon,......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 550
Approximate Pages: 3 (260 words per double-spaced page) |