A&p by John Updike

Welcome to Adulthood

        The events of A&P by John Updike are seen through the eyes of Sammy, the main character, who is also about to become an adult.  He uses the concepts of pride, desire, and social class to show that impulsive actions can lead to memorable moments in one’s life.  This story shows the first step of his change.  This story focuses on that fact that we cannot always do what the people around us want us to do and that we sometimes must find the strength to stand up for what we believe in.  

        At the beginning of the story, Sammy is at his cash register checking out a customer.  For just a minute, he forgets what he is doing when the three girls in bathing suits walk in.  This causes Sammy to lose his train of thought and rings up a box of crackers twice.  This caused the “witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows,” (201) to give him a hard time.  This older lady seemed like the type of lady who felt like she was in a position of high status and Sammy was someone who was beneath her.  She could have also been jealous because Sammy seemed to lose attention, if any, as soon as the younger flesh walked in.  Sammy put women of an older caliber in a different playing field.  He viewed all the older, less attractive shoppers as “sheep” pushing their carts around in a herd, or as “house slaves in pin curlers” (202).  He reveals in the story that he thinks it’s all right for young girls to walk around the store in their bathing suits, but other women,” women with varicose veins mapping their legs and body” should not (202).

        The leader of the “bathing suit mafia” was nicknamed Queenie.  Queenie is the they type of girl who did not care what anyone else said or thought.  She was going to do what she wanted no matter what.  Queenie was the one who “talked the other two into coming in here with her, and now she was showing them how to do it, walk slow and hold yourself straight.” (201).  She was so confident, so aware of herself.  For her to be to walk around with her bathing suit straps pushed down, “off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms,” (201) she had to think highly of herself with no intention of removing herself off her own pedestal.  Sammy also seemed to be infatuated with her.  He beautifully described and awed over her more than the other two girls.  He stated that 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” (201).   It was almost as if he could not get enough of Queenie.  He wanted more of her.   Now, the other two girls, they were nowhere near being as beautiful as Queenie and he pointed that out clearly.  At one point, he says “The fat one with the tan sort of fumbled with the cookies, but on second thought she put the package back,” (201).  He described her as almost gross-like, like, she was contemplating whether to eat something that makes her happy or to put it back to be pleasing.  Society obviously won out over her happiness because she chose to put them back.  Sammy most definitely did not see the other two girls as equals to Queenie and that may very well have been the case, because they did not have the same social status and looked to her for direction.  By hanging out with Queenie, the girls felt as if they were slowly reaching the top of the social pyramid.