A & P By John Updike

Abstract
       Sammy is checker at the A & P grocery store. One day his attention is drawn to three girls who walk in with just heir bathing suits on and no shoes. As they walk though the store he analyzes each girl and their figure. As they approach to check out they choose his cash register. Sammy is checking them out as his manager walks in and scolds the girls for just wearing bathing suits and tells them the store policy. This embarrasses Sammy and he quits as the girls walk out of the store.




Response
           The thoughts of guys and how they perceive women is shown in this story, “A & P” written by John Updike. The narrator of this story is Sammy, who is checker at the grocery store. He sees three girls walk into the store in just their bathing suits. By instinct men or boys are going to stare in amazement at a women’s body. Throughout this story that’s all the Sammy focuses on is their body’s.

            His superego or imagination starts to kick in when he talks about Queenie, which he labels one girl because she’s the leader of the pack. He imagines that her walk, which is stepping from heels to her toes, resembles how she walks in her everyday heels. Her slender body dressed pale pink swimsuit making her appear as a clean and untouched palette. This intrigues Sammy because of his mind wanders about the girl and the life she lives. He never once questions why she is just in her swimming suit because she looks good in it. This is different for the other girls that are with her, and all of this is because of the image that they give off to males.

            Now as Sammy comes back to his conscious mind or ego. He wonders why they’d be wearing swimming suits when the beach is 5 miles away, not to mention that the grocery store is in the middle of town. Why would girls take the trouble of going here? Is it because they wanted to make an impression on the men of the store? Did they do it for their own satisfaction to make themselves feel better?

            None of these reasons would seem logical when looking at it from the larger girl’s perspective. Why would she want to show her body off?  From the perspective that Sammy saw her from she had folds of skin over her suit and you could see the tan lines from the previous suits she had worn. This had to be uncomfortable for her to do. Did she maybe do it out of a dare that the other girls convinced her to do? I don’t understand the whole reason for them coming into the grocery store dressed like this?

            I feel like the author was trying to prove a point to young people in society. He was trying to show us that not all guys are bad and that just because they stare at a girls doesn’t mean they’re a pig. It relies solely on how girls dress. The men or boys wouldn’t stare at them if they dressed moderately and didn’t show their body off so much. Therefore this makes young adults at fault for their own decisions. If they want to recognize then they should wear more obvious clothing, if they don’t want to be looked at dress modestly.