So These Three Girls Walk into an A&P Store...

Jack Schwimmer
AP-1
779

"A&P": A True Coming-of-Age Story

Perhaps on the surface, the John Updike story “A&P” is a dull, nearly nonsensical day-in-the-life tale of a young clerk who impulsively quits his job due to his interest in three relatively attractive girls who wear bathing suits into a supermarket. Yet to understand the story at such a superficial level is to do a disservice to Updike’s carefully-orchestrated plot and character development, and to fail to understand the broader themes of the importance of standing up for what one believes, defending one’s friends, and choosing to live a meaningful life. The setting of the story, a local Massachusetts A&P store, is perhaps the perfect embodiment of a consumer-conditioned society, and the coming-of-age story which occurs within such a setting serves as a beautiful contrast.

The story’s narrator, Sammy, has a boring job but a witty personality. His awareness of international affairs and historical events further enhances his observations. “If she’d been born at the right time, they would have burned her over in Salem,” (2) while a horrible thought, enables the reader to easily picture the customer who Sammy imagines to have spent the last fifty years trying to catch a cashier’s mistake. And he provides commentary on Russo-American relations while at the same time describing his coworker Stokesie when he says, “I forgot to say he thinks he’s going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when it’s called the Great Alexandrov and Petrooshki Tea Company or something” (9). He has a very distinct voice and a very observant mind. He is at times bitterly sarcastic, and is a very relatable character for the typical teenage boy. The three girls in the bathing suits obviously draw his attention, but he also vividly describes Stokesie and Lengel. The reader knows as much as he or she needs to know about the characters, particularly Sammy: no more, no less. The setting (a small town in Massachusetts) is not unusual, but the fact that three girls are walking through an A&P store in their bathing suits is. It is this chance concurrence that ultimately results in Sammy’s “coming of age.”

The climax of the story is a bit puzzling, considering the “hero” is a small-town clerk who only minutes earlier was asking himself, “what do these bums do with all that pineapple juice?” (11), and that the heroic action is initially unexplainable, unprovoked, and ill-received. Sammy apparently begins to think about quitting literally seconds before he does. When Lengel asks Sammy if he has rung up this purchase, Sammy thinks and says “no,” but “it wasn’t about what I was thinking” (20). This sentence is ambiguous, and when taken in context the reader must wonder, “If it wasn’t about what he was thinking, what was it about? What was going on in Sammy’s mind just before he decided to quit?” Sammy does offer some explanation for quitting: when Lengel questions Sammy’s logic, Sammy says, “You didn’t have to embarrass them [the three girls]” (25). And at precisely this moment, Sammy seems to have complete control over his emotions: he tells Lengel that, though Lengel may not understand what Sammy is saying, Sammy certainly understands his own motives. Just one moment later, Sammy says that it is fatal to not go through with a gesture once you begin it. Sammy knows that he will be—in the words of Lengel—“feeling this for the rest of his life,” but for Sammy, “remembering how [Lengel] made that pretty girl blush makes me so scrunchy inside…”(30). So Sammy, not far below the surface, has a very clear motivation. Sammy notes in the last sentence of the story that his “stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” (31). The last sentence foreshadows a new phase of Sammy’s life which begins only after he resigns. The reader sees that Sammy has changed since the beginning of the story, as he is now ready to go out into the real world. He has acknowledged that there is more for him outside the tiny suburban A&P store. And in the last sentence, Updike reveals the truth behind Sammy’s motivations: he does not quit for the three girls in the bathing suits, nor because he is tired of working for Lengel, but rather because he recognizes that there is more for him to do in life. He has a future, and he knows that in order to take advantage of it, he must escape the small grocery store which symbolizes consumerism. In this way, Sammy is a true hero, and Sammy’s life, though open-ended, is filled with potential.


Questions for discussion
1) Why does Sammy feel such a connection to the three girls?
2) When exactly does Sammy realize he is at a new phase in his life? Before he quits? Afterwards?
3) If it wasn’t about what he was thinking, what was it about? What was going on in Sammy’s mind just before he decided to quit?
4) How can you relate to Sammy?