A&P

This story has a lot to do with manly decisiveness. This is a young boy that is drawn to these three girls that come into the store. The girls being in just bathing suits didn’t help the situation. Boys are boys and always will be. How else would we expect this young boy to act? Maybe the boy acted the way he did to oppose his boss or because he didn’t really agree with him, but I think it was mostly to impress the girls.

“I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not” (Updike 220). This statement after Sammy first notices the girls shows that his minds was elsewhere then work. Lengal also does state that it is there policy, and I don’t think that he was rude. The same thing would happen today if you were to walk into a store with no shoes or shirt.

I believe Sammy being a young man had a lot to do with his decision to quit. He didn’t really put much thought into his decision and it was rather irrational. His attraction to the girls and the want to be noticed influenced his decision. He obviously wasn’t thinking about the repercussions from his mom and dad until the aftermath as these statements show; “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your Mom and Dad,” he tells me (Updike 223). “It’s true I don’t” (Updike 223). “But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it’s fatal not to go through with it” (Updike 223).

Sammy experiences an epiphany at the end of the story when he realizes he made a stupid decision “I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” (Updike 223). The girls were already long gone and he had no prize.