Free Essays on A & P

Sometimes reality can be distorted by an intrapersonal conflict Sometimes reality can be distorted by an intrapersonal conflict. The story â€Å"A&P† written by John Updike, illustrates how our perspective of a situation can be rearranged and become the opposite reality of what was originally perceived. â€Å"A&P† tells the story of a boy who works at a grocery store. One day some girls come in wearing only bikinis, he becomes very interested in everything these girls do. The people at the store are giving these girls dirty looks while the grocery boy is thinking in his mind that these are the sweetest girls he has ever seen. His manager comes out to tell the girls that they are doing something wrong and that he would like them to leave. As the girls are leaving the boy tells his manager that he quits, in hopes that the girls would see him quitting and he would become there hero. When the boy finally reaches the parking lot to see the girls he saved they were gone. He then realizes that when he did what he did he was not thi nking with his full capabilities. If the boy had not been so wrapped up in these half naked women he would have been able to handle the situation in a more professional manner. The problem starts at the very beginning of the story. â€Å"In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits.† So first of he notices they were people of the opposite sex and secondly he notices they were only wearing bathing suits. â€Å"The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece.† A two piece bathing suit reveals more skin then most one piece bathing suit. While he is watching the girls he was also trying to ring up an old lady. â€Å"She’s one of those cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know it made here day to trip me up.† Ok so this guy is checking out some girls and rings something up twice and he gets mad at the lady be... Free Essays on A & P Free Essays on A & P â€Å"A & P† Life’s hardest lessons are sometimes learned too little, too late. In the short story â€Å"A & P†, by John Updike, the main character, Sammy, is a nineteen year-old checker at a local grocery store in a small town just north of Boston. In a matter of a day, he goes from an immature boy with unrealistic ideas and fantasies, to a man who is about to realize how life altering the choices he makes can be. Updike does an excellent job in the portrayal of his main character, Sammy, as a typical teen-age boy working to help out his family. He leads his readers to believe that the only people who enter the store are old women or women with six children. Sammy refers to these women as sheep. His disdain comes through when the three young females, clad only in bathing suits, come into the store, throwing his attention off, while he is cashing out a woman of about fifty. His thoughts about the woman being burned in Salem, had she been born in an earlier time, reveals the resentment he feels towards his job. Sammy names the object of his adoration, Queenie, since he has determined that she is the leader of the three. He is captivated by Queenie from her oaky hair and prim face down to her feet paddling along naked. She has unknowingly put Sammy into a hypnotic state. Updike gives his readers the impression that Sammy has lived in isolation up until this one Thursday afternoon. The story takes a dramatic turn when Queenie and her followers come to Sammy’s checkout counter with a jar of Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks. Lengel, manager of the A & P, notices the scantily clad females and says, â€Å"Girls, this isn’t the beach.† He may be a dreary man but, he is all about policy. As Queenie responds with, â€Å"My mother asked me to pick up a jar of herring snacks†, the sound of her voice causes Sammy to picture a fanciful life quite different from his own. He feels that she is above him and that she sho... Free Essays on A & P In Updike’s â€Å"A&P† he talks about Sammy, a teenager who quits his job because he felt bad about his manager embarrassing some girls. Well that is what I have understood when I read the story several times and that’s the impression that I have got after reading the story. When I read the story I thought that Sammy reacted the way he did to impress the girls and there are a lot of hints which made me think that way. Updike leaves Sammy’s motives open to interpretation, however the story makes more sense when one takes Sammy’s motives to be noble instead of superficial. Updike wanted his hero to be a hero not someone who wanted to be a hero to get some girls’ attention. Sammy watched the girls when they came in the store. He looked at them as guy in his age will. Sammy stared at them and was somehow attracted to them because of the way they dressed. In the moment when the manager started arguing with the girls about the way they dress, Sammy’s look to these girls changed. So, Updike tells us on the story how his hero described the girls and the way he looked and thought of them. He looked at these girls like innocents who had been treated bad my his boss. He thought about it for a while and figured out that they did not do anything to deserve such a treatment. His fast reaction which was a result of the frustration that the situation caused him was quitting his job. He decided to stand by the girls side and fight for their rights. The girls were in a hurry so he decided to tell his manager that he quits in front of them, which is a natural thing if we looked at it in another way. â€Å" so I say â€Å"I quit† to lengal quick enou gh for them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero.† (117) When someone helps another people he will like these people to know that he had helped them somehow. So, Sammy reacted fast to let them know that they were not wrong and that his manager was wrong, so he said ... Free Essays on A & P Sometimes reality can be distorted by an intrapersonal conflict Sometimes reality can be distorted by an intrapersonal conflict. The story â€Å"A&P† written by John Updike, illustrates how our perspective of a situation can be rearranged and become the opposite reality of what was originally perceived. â€Å"A&P† tells the story of a boy who works at a grocery store. One day some girls come in wearing only bikinis, he becomes very interested in everything these girls do. The people at the store are giving these girls dirty looks while the grocery boy is thinking in his mind that these are the sweetest girls he has ever seen. His manager comes out to tell the girls that they are doing something wrong and that he would like them to leave. As the girls are leaving the boy tells his manager that he quits, in hopes that the girls would see him quitting and he would become there hero. When the boy finally reaches the parking lot to see the girls he saved they were gone. He then realizes that when he did what he did he was not th inking with his full capabilities. If the boy had not been so wrapped up in these half naked women he would have been able to handle the situation in a more professional manner. The problem starts at the very beginning of the story. â€Å"In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits.† So first of he notices they were people of the opposite sex and secondly he notices they were only wearing bathing suits. â€Å"The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece.† A two piece bathing suit reveals more skin then most one piece bathing suit. While he is watching the girls he was also trying to ring up an old lady. â€Å"She’s one of those cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know it made here day to trip me up.† Ok so this guy is checking out some girls and rings something up twice and he gets mad at the lady be... Free Essays on A & P Setting In A & P â€Å"A & P† by John Updike, is the story of a miserably employed young man. Using the first person point of view, Updike’s central character, Sammy, develops the setting to tell the story of how a discontented young grocer named Sammy, is thrust into the harsh realities of the adult world after making a relatively childish decision. The story is set in a conservative New England town before the sexual revolution and pre-hippies 1960s. Life tends to be stable, predictable and consistent. Sammy has recently turned nineteen years old; an age at which the stone that things were once written in, begins to erode. The late teen years tend to be the age when most people begin to have a greater sense of who they truly are. As a result, they will tend to challenge authority as well as the values and social mores that they have been told all their lives are â€Å"right†. However, this age also marks the period in life where the line between childish rebellion and asserting oneself as a responsible adult becomes blurry. The town that â€Å"A&P† is set in seems to be anything but accommodating to this period in life. The area is reminiscent of those towns such as Oxford and my hometown, Vicksburg, which have officially been declared â€Å"retirement towns†. These places offer very little in the way of careers for those who are not already â€Å"established† or even socially for those under the age of sixty. A young man in his late teens can begin to feel very out of place in an area such this. Sammy apparently does and his resentment towards this fact is evidenced in his attitudes towards his customers and his employer, Lengel. He refers to a customer who corrects him when he charges her twice for a box of crackers as a â€Å"witch†(1) who â€Å"if she’d been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (2) He considers the customers to be â€Å"sheep†(5) and his boss a gray old man. The audie...