A & P Thesis Statement

Sammy begins the story by describing the three girls in bathing suits who have walked into the A & P grocery store. The girl who catches his attention is a chunky girl in a plaid green two-piece swimsuit. As Sammy continues to observe the girls, his interest seems to focus only on the girl who leads the other two into the store. Sammy refers to the girl he likes as "Queenie",someone showing poise and leadership, while the other girls

There is a sudden change in Sammy's attitude toward the girls throughout the story. At first, Sammy and his friend's he work

Sammy’s obsession with Queenie shows how Sammy doesn’t get much action. He is about a twenty year old guy who is obsessing over a 16 or 17-year-old girl. Sammy gives every single detail about Queenie; for example, he says, “She was the queen. She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and making their shoulders round. She didn’t look around, not this Queen, she just walked on slowly, on these white prima-donna legs.” About 80% of the story is dedicated to the description of Queenie.

Sammy shows the reader his domineering and perceptive side as his description of each girl borders on rude but comical. He is able to pick out the "

Sammy gets a glimpse of independence from queenie when she buys her mother’s crackers. As Sammy thinks of queenie with her herring snacks he imagines “queenies parents standing around eating and drinking only the best things in life” (Updike 288). This imagery shows how desperate Sammy is at becoming independent to be his own person. All of his fantasies are crushed when the girls are told to leave and Sammy tries to stand up and say “I quit “(Updike 289). Shocking one of his family’s longtime friends the store manager, and also not even getting the girl of his dreams. Sammy finds himself stuck without a job because of his unthoughtful outburst. While Sammy may have gained independence he lost thing in life to help him be more independent. His impulsive uneducated action made him loose a job and have to deal with things more on his own since his parents got him that job. With A&P Sammy acted more on impulse and not thinking through his plan. This leaves him independent from his job but not really independent in the since that he really wanted.

John Updike’s ‘A&P’, is about a young man’s struggle with morality, authority, and freedom. Through a series of events Sammy witnessed injustice in his workplace leading him to quit his job. When Sammy quit his job he was taking a stand against authority because he longed for freedom from the A&P and his manager. Sammy made the leap from an adolescent, knowing little about life, into a man facing the consequences from his actions. John Updike’s use of language and actions reveal the internal struggles and relationships of a young man growing into adulthood.

The interaction between Lengel and Queenie intensifies as she formulates excuses toward Lengel regarding his reprimand “My mother asked me to pick up a jar of herring snacks” (194). This very moment in the story, Sammy abruptly formulates a deeper perception of Queenie, “All of a sudden, I slid right down her voice into her living room” (193). His dream-state imagery of her life, and the sharp contrast to his own, helps him create a more constructed identity for Queenie. His dreamlike state of comparison with Queenie establishes for Sammy a logic in his rationale for yearning to truly form a deeper relationship with and be recognized by Queenie.

“A&P” and “Girl” both symbolized the protagonists’ oppression by an older, more experienced generation. However, Kincaid’s “Girl” was artistic with an undercurrent of selfless love and hope while Updike’s “A&P” was uninspiring with selfishness and lust. The protagonist of “Girl” discouraged her daughter’s dreams out of love. The protagonist of “A & P” encouraged the antagonists’ out of a selfish desire for self-promotion.

Sammy is stuck in that difficult transition between childhood and adulthood. He is a nineteen-year-old cashier at an A&P, the protagonist in a story with the same name. John Updike, the author of "A&P," writes from Sammy's point of view, making him not only the main character but also the first person narrator. The tone of the story is set by Sammy's attitude, which is nonchalant but frank--he calls things as he sees them. There is a hint of sarcasm in Sammy's thoughts, for he tends to make crude references to everything he observes. Updike uses this motif to develop the character of Sammy, as many of these references relate to the idea of "play."

In the beginning of the story, Sammy understands that his current trajectory is all contained within the A&P; “Stokesie’s married, with two babies chalked up on his fuselage already, but as far as I can tell that’s the only difference. He’s twenty-two and I was nineteen (1494).” Stokesie represents a potential future for Sammy where there is no hope for anything more than moving one rung higher than his current situation. Later in the story, Sammy is introduced to a different potential future when he meets Queenie and her friends. This is a future that is bright and exciting. In his imagination, Sammy sees, “[Quennie’s] father and other men were standing around in ice-cream coats … all holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in them (1495).” This is a stark contrast with his current situation where, “When [Sammy’s] parents have somebody over they get lemonade and if it’s a real racy affair Schlitz in tall glasses (1495).” Sammy imagines an prospective future bigger, brighter, and better than his current situation and has something to aspire to that is greater than his current future. Queenie and the girls become a symbol of hope because they are associated with this new life. The girls become the driving force in Sammy decision to abandon his current trajectory within the A&P, and to step

Queenie is important to the story's conflict and theme because she creates them. Queenie causes the main conflict when she walks into the A & P. The manager of the A & P yells at the young girls about their attire when the are being rung up by the Sammy. At the end of the story, Sammy stands up for himself by exclaiming he quits as the girls are walking out of the door. He does this because he hopes the girls will see him as a hero. As a result he loses his job and never gets the

To wrap up, Sammy sees his future of the classes of society and at the same time, he is in a cultural brawl with his employer. Sammy is trying to live his life of being poor, but he wants a taste of the sweet life and realize the A&P is his bottleneck and needs to make a change now. Sammy is sick of seeing common people go through the isles like “sheep” and seeing the same routines of people. Sammy sees another world than his manager and wants to eat herring snacks with girls, instead of just being ask where things on the isles are and ringing up products. Ultimately Sammy will quit his job because “man vs society conflicts” he endures on a regular basics. These two conflicts are about Sammy growing up and constantly second guessing his life

“The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan (18)…” He calls this girl simply “Plaid” because of her swimsuit. Next, he spies “…a tall one, with black hair that hadn’t quite frizzed right, and one of those sunburns right across under the eyes, and a chin that was too long (19)…” This girl he refers to as “Big Tall Goony-Goony” because not only was she tall, but she appeared to fit his prototype (“imagined appearance”—yes, I’m bringing psychology into my paper) a “goon.” Finally, Sammy spotted “…the third one, that wasn’t quite so tall. She was the queen. She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and making their shoulders round (19).” True to the way he described her, Sammy called this girl “Queenie” because she appeared to be the leader of the group—their queen. It was immediately obvious that Sammy was drawn to this girl because while he briefly described the other two, he spent a large amount of time throughout the story describing and assessing the character of Queenie.

The young girl nicknamed Queenie, The 19-year old store cashier Sammy, and the store manager Lengel. The girl nicknamed Queenie by Sammy is physically described to petite with oaky hair and also to be very beautiful by the narrator. Since there isn’t much dialogue for queenie there is no definite personality that can be given to her, but by judging by her response to the situation in the story it can be inferred that she is a well-mannered young woman who has politeness as one of her virtues. She is a major character even though she only speaks a little bit throughout the entirety of story, Queenie is a major character because it is her need to get a grocery item that prompted the three girls to come into store, and also to impress her is the reason why Sammy quits his job at A&P. The next major character is Sammy. Sammy is a 19 year old cashier in the A&P store. Physically he is an average 19- year old but his personality differs a little bit because he is heavily observant of certain things and in this story he tended to be easily infatuated with a girl. The reason why he is a major character is because the story is based around him and he is the narrator and without him there would be no real story to tell. The last major character is the store manager Lengel himself. Lengel is an old man who like most other characters is not described physically, but judging by his actions we can infer that Lengel is either a power hungry old guy, or a guy who wants everybody to follow the rules no matter how big the diversion is. Lengel is a major character because of the fact that he is the person who starts the conflict of the story. It is his chastisement of the girls that starts the primary conflict of the story and this conflict is what influences everything that happens later in the story. There aren’t that many characteristics to place these major characters into a popular stereotype but from the information given and

Sammy is different from everyone else in his town. He sees the people in his town and is motivated to quit his job to take a stand, to be different when he sees Queenie and her friends. Because noticed that the girls are not from his town, but come from a different place. Sammy realizes that he wants to be like Queenie and enjoy his youth. He does not want to end up like the people at his work with kids and a wife with bills. Sammy does not want to be caged up and stuck in his small town and not ever knowing what he could have done if he had quit his job. Queenie and her friend show Sammy what is