English Short Paper

Kimberly Martinez
Mrs. Wood
A & P Writing Assignment
  1) The short story A & P by John Updike starts off by a young male cashier observing the costumers. It’s a slow day so he has nothing else to do than to wait for costumers to check out. All of the sudden three young ladies walk in the door. All three of them are wearing just their bathing suits. The cashier starts observing them very carefully. He describes their physical features in detail. The girls started to go up and down the aisles looking for something. The cashier was intrigued by the girls. He nicknames the main girl “Queenie” as she is the head of the group. Finally the girls go up to him to check out Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream. He notices that “Queenie” doesn’t have a ring in her finger. The manager Lengel goes up to them and tells them that the store is not the beach and to put some clothes on. The girls start to blush and “Queenie” argues that they are descent. The cashier, Sammy, tries to defend them by quitting his job. Unfortunately the girls left without hearing him and he stayed alone and jobless.
  2) In my summary of the short story A & P I just go through the main events and I skip all the details. I list all the main characters and try to describe them just a bit. But in a summary this short I don’t really have the opportunity to describe the characters in full detail. I say a lot is lost in my summary because the main character, Sammy, describes the three girls very well. He mentions their type of bathing suit, the type of body they have and the color. Also the setting of the story is lost because he goes on and describes how slow the store is and his surroundings. In my summary you get the main idea of the story. I mention what and who is the cashier and also I list some things that lead to the climax of the story. But I leave out some important lines that the main character, Sammy, says that tells who he really is. For example when he quit his job and he was...