John Updike’s “A&P” as a provocative tale of social perception
In order to understand the two stories on John Updike’s “A&P”, the characters have to hold the weight of being the most important theme in the short story. The first set of characters consists of Sammy, the Girls, and Lengel who all dictate the first short story from Sammy’s point of view. The second of the two tales Updike pens about in this short, is that of where he makes us question what being “decent” by society’s current standards means, by putting an emphasis on perception and almost spoon-feeding us readers to pick up on what he’s trying to imply by using Sammy to illustrate it all. The paper-thin storyline consisting of what Sammy is going through by narrating and the other, which is the main story being Sammy and the girls representing freedom and non-conformity from a neutral point of view versus what Lengel, the shoppers, and the storefront itself represent as being the socially correct status quo and policy we hold as normal living in society.
In this story the establishment that is the A&P itself, is portrayed as routine and monotonous as a market in the middle of town can possibly be. Updike made it so on purpose, to give us a neutral setting that synonymous with our reality and what we perceive as normal behavior in society. The A&P is acceptable as a run-of-the-mill chain market, this character represents the status quo of a 1st world society where one is judged instantly for behaving or acting out of the ordinary solely based on that one thing being exhibited by that person at the time. Take the obvious example where Lengel could have handled this situation with the girls better. Where most would have welcomed the customers and introduced themselves before directly correcting the problem, he says “Girls, this isn’t the beach.” (Updike 160) who yes, they are dressed slightly outside of policy but weren’t causing any trouble in the store. The girls were just shopping for groceries, not being toxic like the one lady described as a “cash-register watcher… a witch about fifty…”(158) who’s actively looking to hassle and cause trouble for someone.
It’s as if Lengel is simply a position of power where regulating the cogs in the machine by being the manager is what he essentially is, as opposed to a human being first. Instead of interacting as one human being to another, he initiates as an authoritative figure against an anomaly perceived as hostile. Through this, a stigma is cast on the girls where they are judged as not being “decent” (161) simply by associating them with the word when he states “We want you decently dressed when you come in here”. He doesn’t even acknowledge that they are in 2-piece swim suits and just instinctively bashed them for the first thing he saw which was the bare shoulders. An unnecessary scene was made and blown a bit out of proportion as well when it could’ve been handled far simpler than what actually went down.
The rest of the shoppers and Stokesie in this “checker-board green-and-cream rubber-tile floor” (159) can be viewed as pieces or cogs in the machine as well the way Sammy describes them all as “sheep”(159) and how them “seeing a scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie, who shook open a paper bag as gently as peeling a peach, not wanting to miss a word.”(161). The girls representing free people who are just being human, they walf unobstructed by what anyone thinks of them by the way they act or move around the store “walking against the usual traffic” (159) where the other shoppers “even looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure what they had seen was correct” (159). The girls and Sammy are more objective minded and free rather than routine and meek the way the shoppers and A&P Manager are.
Does that really make them any less decent human beings? Just because Lengel and the old lady that harassed Sammy abide by the store policies, both of whom are described in similar fashion to one another as being “pretty dreary… but doesn’t miss that much” (160). Does that automatically entitle them as being labeled decent human beings? Updike ended the story with our protagonist leaving his job position up in flames not for the sake of standing up for the girls, but because he knew better than to simply select a course of action based on said policy. He knew better to disassociate himself from the assumption that can be made of him by association with Lengel simply because he’s an employee here. Best to bury that possibility and leave, “you’ll feel this for the rest of your life,” (162) Sammy is told by him. He knows he will but not for the reasons his manager thinks he will, but because he “felt how hard the world was going to be to me from hereafter” (162), meaning he’ll be paving his own way as opposed to being part of a path given to him.

WORK CITED
Updike, John. “A&P.” Literature to Go. 2nd ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014. 157-162. Print