A & P

In the story “A&P” by John Updike the main character, Sammy, is a cashier at the grocery store called A&P. He helps three teenage girls, who are just wearing nothing but bikinis, when his boss comes up and yells at them for embarrassing the store like that. Sammy then sticks up for the girls, which after the girls left he quit. Sammy shows several factors, of the situation, why he quit his job.

First, I think he quit because he really wanted to look like a huge hero to the girls. When he ended up walking out of the store at the end they were gone. They really didn’t notice him at all to even know that he quit his job for them. Sammy did think that the girls would notice even though they didn’t at all.

Second, I think he wanted to show his boss that embarrassing the girls like that was wrong. Meaning it was right out in the open in the store Sammy thought it was wrong to do that to the young teenage girls. The boss was telling Sammy that it was wrong to not obey the dress codes that the store had even though they came to buy a couple of things. The boss also didn’t like the idea of them not having anything appropriate on because back in the day they weren’t used to seeing anything like that except on the beach.

Lastly, I think Sammy quit his job because he thought Queenie, the main girl of the three, was hitting on him. He thought that because she made eye contact with him when she first came in the store and also when she was pulling her money out of her bikini top that maybe she liked him. I think because of that Sammy thought if he stuck of for her that maybe she’d be impressed even though she never cared about him at all.

In conclusion, with his mind not thinking 100% he quit his job for many different reasons. All the reasons had something to tie in with the three girls that had came in the store and he just really wanted to look manly and really impress them even though it didn’t work.