The Detailed Setting Of John Updike’s “A & P”

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The short story “A & P” by John Updike is a story of a boy, Sammy, who works at an A & P grocer. On the surface, this story appears to be a short story of a boy with a crush on a few teenage girls who come into the store where he works. The author uses certain elements such as descriptive words and colorful imagery to help develop the setting of story. The setting that we see in A & P comes to us through the eyes of Sammy. The way in which Sammy describes the physical elements around him helps to develop Sammy’s personality.
The setting of A & P is developed with great detail. For example, Updike describes a specific event where, “… [the girls] shuffeled out of sight behind a pyramid of diet delight peaches.” Statements like this are what make this story so interesting. Updike could have simply said behind a pyramid of cans, but he goes into great detail, using the name of the canned product.
… [i]f you stand at our front doors you can see two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices and about twenty-seven old freeloaders tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again.
Updike also goes into great detail about how the world outside of the A & P looks. “… [o]ur town is five miles from a beach … we're right in the middle of town.” Sammy describes what is not visible from the front doors of the A & P which makes his description even more vivid. By applying such vivid descriptions Updike is trying to show the expressivity of Sammy. Sammy gives precise detail about the setting outside the store to allow the reader to step into the scene and imagine the A & P surroundings as if they are actually there. “After awhile they come around out of the far aisle, around the light bulbs, records at discount of the Caribbean Six or Tony Martin Sings or some such gunk you wonder they waste the wax on …[.]” When Sammy is describing what items can be found in that ...