“A & P” by John Updike takes place in 1961, in a small New England town's A&P grocery store. Sammy, the narrator, is introduced as a grocery checker and an observer of the store's patrons. He finds himself fascinated by a particular group of girls. Just in from the beach and still in their bathing suits, they are a stark contrast, to the otherwise plain store interior. As they go about their errands, Sammy observes the reactions, of the other customers, to this trio of young women. He uses the word "Sheep" to describe the store regulars, as they seem to follow one and other, in their actions and reactions. The girls, however, appear to be unique in all aspects of their beings: walking, down the isles, against the grain: going barefoot and in swim suits, amongst the properly attired clientele. They are different and this is what catches and holds Sammy's attention. He sees them in such detail, that he can even see the queen of the bunch. Sammy observes their movements and gestures, up until the time of their checkout. At which point, they are confronted by the store manager and chastised for their unacceptable appearance. He believes their attire to be indecent. Sammy, feeling that the managerial display was unnecessary and unduly embarrassing for the girls, decides to quit his position as checker. Thought he knows that his decision may be hasty, he knows that he has to follow through and he can never go back. He leaves, with a clean conscious, but the burden of not knowing what the future has in store. This story represents a coming-of-age for Sammy. Though it takes place over the period of a few minutes, it represents a much larger process of maturation. From the time the girls enter the grocery store, to the moment they leave, you can see changes in Sammy. At first, he sees only the physicality of the girls: how they look and what they are wearing, seem to be his only observations. As the story progresses, he notices the interactions between the girls, and he even determines the Name 2 hierarchy of the small dynamic. He observes their actions and how they affect the other patrons of the business. Rather, how the other people view the girl's actions. His thought process is maturing and he starts to see things as an adult might see them. He notices that the "regulars", seem to do the same things day in and day out. Following the same path and directions through the isles, they check off their lists and go about their searching. This realization is why the group of girls is so refreshing to him. They ARE different and do not seem to follow any set path. They seem to live in the now. After seeing this, he starts to feel bad about the way the girls are being viewed by others. He no longer wants to be part of something that discourages uniqueness (Porter). This is further supported in the checkout scene, when he makes the comment about the policy and how it is what the "kingpins" want. It is not something that he believes in, nor does he want to enforce. Sammy starts to feel, for the first time, that there is something out there that is better. He is ready to go find it. When he decides to quit his job, hastily as it may be, he is making the choice to be an individual, to venture into the unknown. It is something that he knows he has to do, so he does have some hesitation in "removing the apron". Once it has been removed, he knows that he cannot put it back on. This symbolizes his acceptance of having to move on in life (Porter). When the manager makes reference to Sammy's decision and in it's effect on his parents, it is a representation of Sammy's coming-of-age. He is leaving his adolescence behind and this always has some effect on parents. It is hard for them to let their children go, into adulthood. This time is something that he says his family looks back on as sad, but he does not see it that way, at all. Sammy sees it as a time that he took a significant step towards becoming a man. John Updike's story "A&P" brings into question the difference between innocence and immaturity. There is a distinct difference between these states. Innocence is the purer of the two. In John Updike's story A&P, Sammy is an innocent young man. Because of his innocence, he quits his job over three immature young women. These young women know better than to try what they do in the story, but they are not mature enough to realize how wrong it is. Sammy's innocence lies in stark Name 3 contrast to the girls' immaturity (Peden). Sammy is innocent rather than immature because he doesn't seem to realize that ogling the girls in bathing suits might not be the right thing to do. He examines their bodies without the slightest embarrassment and isn't the least bit self-conscious about it. He doesn't even bother to disguise his appraisal of them. He says, "I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not." It must be obvious what he's doing, but he doesn't care if anyone notices. He's just flustered when a customer starts protesting that he rang the cracker up twice. If Sammy weren't innocent, he would have been less respectful in his thoughts about he girls. He examines and admires their bodies without shame, but he gives his favorite a rather respectful name: Queenie. He is neither precisely mature nor immature. A truly mature young man wouldn't stare at the girls as Sammy does. He wouldn't be so distracted by their presence that he couldn't remember what he had rung up. An immature young man might have abandoned his register at the first possible moment in order to follow Queenie around the store, drooling over her from behind a stack of canned peaches. His final act of innocence is to quit his job. He doesn't realize how futile his action is. In his own mind, his quitting his job is the right thing to do. He sees A&P as an unfair employer the kind of place where young women are not treated with respect. It never occurs to him that quitting will change nothing and solve nothing. He is astounded to witness this and says, "Looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep throughand my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter." The girls who came into the store are immature, not innocent. They are not innocent because they know very well that they should not walk around in a grocery store in nothing but bathing suits, and they are immature for doing so regardless of right or wrong (Peden). They are deliberately trying to get attention, the kind of attention Sammy gives them. But they are not prepared for the manager to lecture them the way he does. The girls are also immature for running away when they're scolded in the store. It is unlikely that a mature Name 4 person would go shopping in a bathing suit. But the ultimate evidence of their immaturity is in the fact that they ran away. Had they been innocent, they probably would have stayed in the store and persisted in asking what was wrong with what they were doing. They are like guilty children who tried something they knew they shouldn't and then are surprised when they're caught. Queenie and her friends most likely didn't notice poor Sammy and his defense of them because they are used to people their age being as immature as they are. The young men they're used to are the type who approach them and talk to them while looking at their bodies. They're used to boys who approach them and try to impress them rather than admiring them from afar. But Sammy, in his innocence, doesn't attract their attention, as much as he would like to be their knight in shining armor. Sammy's innocence in not approaching the girls or trying to flirt with them makes him less interesting in their immature minds, if they even noticed him at all.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Gilbert Porter (November 1972). "John Updike's 'A & P': The Establishment and an Emersonian Cashier." English Journal (The English Journal, Vol. 61, No. 8) 61 (8): pp.1155–1158. William Harwood Peden (1964). The American Short Story. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 70.