John Updike - A&p It Term Paper

Lengel says, "That's all right...but this isn't the beach." And after a counter-protest by another of the three girls, Lengel lectures, "We want you decently dressed when you come in here." For all the readers know, Lengel himself is turned on by the lovely young women, and is only ranting at them in order to gaze at the splendor on display. In any event, Queenie says, "We are decent"; she is definitely becoming agitated, and as the narrator reminds readers, she is acutely conscious of her apparent high social standing, and needn't put up with a pious loser manager in a store "pretty crummy" store. The Sunday school pedagogue has his last say; "Girls I don't want to argue with you. After this come in here with your shoulders covered. It's our policy." He turns his back on the girls. Sammy hasn't rung up the herring fillets yet; but the coy Updike leads readers from an awkward, unfriendly confrontation between piety and prettiness, and offers as an escape the image of breasts - between which Queenie's money has been safely kept - as "the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known..."

Even the un-creasing of the bill from Queenie is done "tenderly as you may imagine"; and the herring container is "nestle[d]" in the bag. And then, jerking readers' minds back to the anger and embarrassment that Sammy felt while the girls stood in front of him and his manager made a fool of himself, Sammy says "I quit," hoping against hope that the girls will see him as a hero. Pulling a "family guilt" card from his bad of management tricks, Lengel "sighs," puts on a patient parental look and tells Sammy he doesn't want to do this "to your mom and dad."

Sammy is clearly being impetuous and knee-jerk here but "...remembering how he made that pretty girl blush" makes Sammy feel "so scrunchy inside..." Silly descriptions flow from Sammy's consciousness as to why quitting so suddenly is a good idea; after all, he's been hit by love's mysterious infatuation arrows. And, well, the summertime outside makes it a fortuitous time to quit, he asserts, because he won't be "fumbling around" putting his winter boots and jacket on. This of course is patently absurd, but Updike is showing (not telling) readers that a boy of 19, with apparently not much girlfriend experience and hungry for love and sex, can be smitten by the mere presence of sensual charm gone carnal in a skimpy swimsuit.

As Sammy, in his "white shirt" (quite a different "white" from the white that describes the skin of his lovely fantasy babe, Queenie) leaves the store and his job - one hopes he's not abandoning his future - he glances back and sees, "over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture," Lengel "checking the sheep through." And alas, the one person who had passed through Sammy's slot who was not only a non-sheep-type, but the explosively attractive girl of his sexual and virtual fantasies, is now gone, "of course." And the world was probably going to be "hard" for Sammy now; but indeed, it had been pretty hard up to now, so, what's new?

Works Cited

Updike, John. "A&P." The Early Stories: 1953-1975. New York: Random House, 2003.

Wells, Walter. "John Updike's 'A&P': a return visit to Araby." Studies in Short Fiction 30.2.....