A&P

3 Pages 670 Words

I decided to write my response essay on John Updike's short story "A&P". When 19-year-old Sammy was first introduced, he was working at A&P, as a cashier, for a summer job. He soon becomes bored, and annoyed at having to deal with "one of these cash register watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows" (267). There is a sense that he is, annoyed with adults, especially those much older than he is such as "women with six children and varicose veins mapping their legs and nobody" (269). He is bored with his town and it's "two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and the three real-estate offices" (269).
However, when three girls stroll into the A&P, they all seem to catch Sammy's eye. One is "a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad 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" (267). Another was "a tall one, with black hair that hadn’t quite frizzed right, and one of those sunburns right across under the eyes, and a chin that was too long" (268). The one that really catches Sammy’s eye, nevertheless, is "the queen," the one who "kind of leads" the other two. (268) Sammy is fascinated by Queenie, as he calls her, with her beige bathing suit with a little nub all over it," her "white prima donna legs," and her walk, which causes her to come down "a little hard on her heels, as if she didn’t walk in her bare feet that much" (268). The presence of the three girls strikes Sammy and some on the other shoppers as well. The shoppers then looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure that they had seen was correct. Sammy observes the three of them carefully, watching, as they move about the store in search of something. When he looses sight of them, "the whole store becomes like a pinball machine"(269)


Sammy, watching and waiting impatiently, to see what aisle the girls mig...