A&p by John Updike

A&P by: John Updike

In the short story, "A&P" by John Updike, a young man named Sammy is the main character and shares his story about how he quit his job. It took place in the summer, in a grocery store, "A&P". It was a nice day outside and three girls happened to walk in. It was something about these girls that caught his attention. The three girls were in nothing but bathing suits. Being the boy that he was, he was interested in the girls and was distracted the whole time they were in the store. When they finally checked out, the manager noticed the girl's appearance and began to confront them about it. Sammy wasn't too happy that his manager did that because he felt as though his manager embarrassed the girls. Right after that he quit his job hoping the girls saw what he did, ran outside to go see them and they were gone.

The story is told through the main character Sammy. He is retelling the event that happened in his life that I would say changed his life and made him think out things more clearly. The style and tone of the story is very sarcastic and the wording of sentences is slang. You can tell by the style and tone that the narrator, Sammy is a young boy by the way he describes the girls appearance and talks throughout the story. I believe the author chose Sammy to tell the story because the story was mainly about his event in his life. If one of the girls told the story, or the manager did, it wouldn't be the same story and wouldn't be as entertaining as Sammy told it coming out of his personal opinion of what happened.

Sammy did what he did because he was motivated to. Seeing that the girls were embarrassed and he didn't see that they had did anything wrong upset him and caused him to quit his job. I believe that he was trying to prove his point as to showing his manager that what he did was wrong but at the end of the situation when he went back outside to go look for the girls, they weren't there anymore and it was like he did all that for nothing. There's a message behind this story. I feel that the author wrote this story to show that you must be sure of something before you make the big decision because at the end, it might have been the wrong choice you made and you wish you can go back in time and change what you did, but there's no going back after making a big decision like that.