AP1 :: essays papers

AP1 The short story "A & P," a nineteen year old boy who works in a small grocery store on the East-Coast, called an A & P. He works in the store as a check out clerk until a warm summer day when three girls wearing only wearing their bathing suits came into the store to buy herring snacks and sour cream for one girl's mother. All was going well until--the owner of the store enters and puts down the girls for coming in the store in inappropriate attire. In a pointless heroic move to try and win over the girls; Sammy quits his job to protest the treatment of the girls. This "selfless" act was in vain, for when he left the store hoping the girls would be there waiting for him, they were gone. Updike has painted a perfect picture of what is in the inner mind of a young man--SEX. He does this by the detailed description of each of the three girls and a "heroic" act to save the day. Updikes use of description of the smallest details of the three girls let the reader know where Sam's mind is; right in the gutter. In the first paragraph Sam's thoughts of the first girl he sees, or as he calls her, "Plaid" are nothing but analyzing every curve on her body. As Plaid walks into the store Sammy begins to have a mental description, of oddly enough--her butt, "with a good tan and a sweet board soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs" (480). Updike takes on this rule as a sex driven nineteen-year-old character very well. Sammy seems to like another quality, "They didn't even have shoes on" (480). This struck me as odd-at least by todays standards. Seeing girls without shoes is an everyday event. The girl that Sammy is most in awe of is "Queenie" the leader of the three girls. Being the leader of the three girls and the most flamboyant may be what attracted Sammy to her; "what got me, the straps were down†¦off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms" (481). Sam's only desire was simply sex and this blinded his judgment.