John Updike -

In John Updike’s short story “A&P”, we meet a young man named Sammy. Sammy is the

typical teenage boy. He is stuck in a mundane job at the grocery store with no future plans. He

lives in an imaginary world, only dreaming about the things that he wants to do. But by the end

of the story, he has learned an important lesson about life. One theme of this story is that we have

to live with the consequences of what we do.

At the beginning of the story, we find young Sammy behind the cash register at the A&P.

He is ringing up an old lady when he sees three girls in the store wearing nothing but their bathing

suits. In the line “I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I

rang it up or not.” (pg.14), we can tell that Sammy is much more interested in watching the young

ladies than to take care of his customer. He also refers to the girl’s rear-ends as “cans”, making

him sound like an immature young man. As soon as Sammy is done with his “witch” of a

. . .