A & P

The story”A& P”, is a contemporary story about a young man coming of age, by making a “manly decisiveness”. Sammy is a young man working as a checker at a grocery store. He has gotten this job because his parents now the manager through church.

As a young person you have dreams, of grandeur and living your life played out how you envision it. As I was reading this story, it was as if this was a foreshadowing of what was to come for Sammy, living out his life, working in the grocery store, and moving up the chain of command. The problem was that Sammy would have to conform to certain standards that he didn’t feel were fair.

When the girls entered the store, Sammy had been bored, and had just gotten chewed out by the “witch”, for making a mistake ringing up her order. He was a young man, who basically followed the rules, and watching these three young women, led by Queenie, make their own way through the store, breaking unspoken rules through out their journey up and down the aisles, going the wrong way, but felt like the right way to them.

When Lengel, the manager comes out, and tells the girls, “This isn’t the beach”, Sammy is embarrassed, by him and his actions. After Lengel, continues to give the girls a hard time, and tells them that the next time they come in with their shoulders should be covered. Sammy decides at that moment that he can’t stand by and let people be judged by Lengel anymore, and he decides to quit. This was the final straw for Sammy, to witness the girls embarrassment, when in Sammy’s eyes they did nothing wrong. He makes his decision, and sticks with it, even though Lengel is saying he will regret it one day, and will disappoint his family.

Kara Carpenter