"A&P," by John Updike, is a story that provides a young man by the name of Sammy an important lesson in life. In this story, Sammy tends to let his impulsiveness and ingenuity take over him. Sammy looses his job in all do to a act of heroic protest against his manager Lengel concerning the proper attire of three girls that walk into the store wearing beach garments. Sammy made the leap from an adolescent, knowing little about life than what he has learned working at the grocery store, into a man prepared for the rough roads that lie ahead.
Lengel plays the role of a “moral authority”. Lengel is the manager of the store, where he makes sure everyone does there job correctly. He also plays the role of a Sunday school teacher where he teaches adolescence the value of morals. He is in charge of the law and loves to tell people what to do. He shows us his characteristics early in the story when some girls stop by A&P to do some shopping on their way to the beach. The whole ordeal begins when Lengel notices that these girls aren’t “decently dressed’ (page 370). They were wearing only bathing suits and prancing around the store. Instead of being sensible and ignoring how they are dressed. Lengel immediately le
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” Her breasts look like “the two smoothest scoops of vanilla (Page 371). When Sammy refers to the one he calls “Queenie”(page 370), he describes her as the one with “long white prima donna legs (Page 370). Sammy thinks he should stand up for these girls and before they leave he says to Lengel “I quit”(Page 373). In fact they had already left and it was to late for Sammy to turn back. To a point he starts wondering, and says:” you never know for sure how girls mind works (do you really think it’s a mind up there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?” (Page 370). In a way he lost a part of his innocence and ingenuity, now having a different outlook on what life might be for him in the near future and the probabilities of it not being so easy. An unreliable narrator is a narrator we can’t trust. ” He describes the other two as being “chubby, fat and pale”(Page 370). Sammy is actually a sexist chauvinist.
The narrator of this story is Sammy but in this case he’s an unreliable narrator. He calls them things like “sheep”, which tells us he thinks they are stupid, “pigs in a chute” and “witch” which implies he thinks they are mean (Page 370). Sammy being innocent and unrealistic, is affected by this situation.
A simple afternoon incident that may have not meant anything to the spectators highlighted a passage in Sammy’s life.
Approximate Word count =
805
Approximate Pages =
3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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