The a&P

Professor Beohm
Feb.28, 2010
The A&P
                      In this essay Updike narrates the story   through the eyes of a teenage store clerk named Sammy. Right from the beginning, all of Sammy’s attention gets diverted to three teenage girls that walk in the A&P in their bathing suits. He was in the middle of checking out an older lady which he described as looking like a witch, at the time of the girls arrival. He got so distracted by the girls that he rang the elderly ladies crackers up twice. He assumed this made her day, because she had been waiting all her life for someone to mess up so she could yell at them for making a mistake. As soon as he gets the old lady out of his way, he gets back to watching the girls intently. Sammy put each girl into a category. He described the first as a typical chunky girl with a round face and nice butt. The second one Sammy described as having “black hair that hadn’t quite frizzed right,   and one of these sunburns right across under the eyes, and chin that was too long”.(pg 68)     She is the type of girl all the other   girls thinks is attractive ,but never makes it and they know this so they keep her around to make them look better. I personally never did this, but I’m sure there are girls that do. The one he likes the best he calls her the queen. She’s not to tall or chunky. He describes the first two girls as wearing bikinis, but doesn’t get into detail about the queen. I never knew that men categorized women in this fashion.   It’s also funny how he thinks everyone else is looking at them in the same way. I’m sure all the other men are
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            looking at the girls and fantasizing about them, but I doubt if it gets any deeper than that. He              
            starts comparing other ladies to the queen. In his eyes no one can...