John Updike's Short Story a & P

Plot and structure summary:

In John Updike's short story A & P, a young nineteen year old by the name of Sammy describes what naively will become his last day on the job at the A & P grocery store. The story begins with a situation that will engulf Sammy's day and eventually lead to actions he could have never foreseen. In the late fifty's, early sixties the world was much more discretionary than it is today. For a woman, young, middle aged, or elder, to bare a generous portion of her epidermis was considered erroneous and ill-mannered while in a municipal location. This exact situation will set in motion Sammy's story.

As Sammy insipidly lingered behind his checkout stand at the A & P grocery store, in saunters three pubescent lasses. All of which flaunting different modules of their hide. Sammy's awareness is immediately directed to the girls location as they leisurely but deliberately enter the A & P barefoot and scarcely clad in nothing more than swim suits. Sammy describes the three adolescents in a sexy and rather inimitable fashion. The three girls are put into a group best described as high school like. First of all there is the chief, illustrated by Sammy as the queen. Sammy proceeds to explain "She had a sort of oaky hair that the sun and salt had bleached, done up in a bun that was unraveling, and a kind of prim face. Walking into the A & P with your straps down, I suppose it's the only kind of face you can have. She held her head so high her neck, coming up out of those white shoulders, looked kind of stretched, but I didn't mind. The longer her neck was, the more of her there was."

The queen is followed by two disciples. The first a short pudgy individual described by Sammy as "a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the tops of the back of her legs."

The third adolescent female is practically the opposite of the other two. She is tall, slender and in a runway model way (not the faultless idea of pretty, but towering like a skyscraper wobbling in the wind) even striking. Sammy draws her up as "the kind of girl other girls think is very "striking" and "attractive" but never quite makes it".

To make a short story even shorter, as Sammy is sadistically "checking out" the young ladies they inevitably end up at his checkout stand. This creates an automatic structure of intensity and a stress factor for Sammy which paints a portrait of temporary insanity. As the girls are at the register Sammy's supervisor Lengel walks in. From the moment of entry a collision is unalterable. Lengel immediately spearheads for the girls. His eyes are set more on his idea of the girls lack of respect than there lack of clothing. Lengel proceeds to strike at the girls with the suggestion that "this isn't the beach". Sammy's insanity is now at it's climax. "I quit". It comes out of Sammy's lips with such quickness it has to be repeated. The situation is not completely understood until Sammy is well out of the A & P and takes one

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