A & P: A Story About Growing UpA & P: A Story About Growing UpJon BorgesEng. 100March 17, 2006A & P: A Story About Growing UpWritten in 1956 by subject narration author, John Updike, “A&P”, presents the story of a nineteen-year-old boy, Sammy, who over time comes to realize the painful reality of life. Sammy, who despises his insipid job as a checkout boy, works at the local “A&P” mini-mart. Undoubtedly, having worked there for much to long, Sammy, finally says enough is enough, and quits his job. This story’s theme revolves around a teenage boy’s transition from boyhood to early adulthood, and the gradual change in three of his main character traits from: imaginative to practical, conservative to experimenting, and non-assertive, to assertive.
Young Sammy almost certainly began his career at “A&P” with enthusiasm and prospect, as would most. He thought his job had a future. However, as the reader starts into the story, they become aware that the assumed former feelings are long gone, and that a new pessimistic and practical feeling has replaced the old. Sammy realizes that no worthwhile future will ever come from working at the mini-mart. Sammy states during a conversation with his co-worker and friend, Stoskie, as they attentively watch the three young girls wander about the store without direction, “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” (Updike 222). This cynical reflection on his partner’s naпve optimism on one-day becoming manager reflects Sammy’s transition from his assumed imaginative or prospective demeanor to a more pragmatic and pessimistic conclusion that “A&P” is a dead end.
Sammy represents the paradigm of your typical middle class, conservative, rule following, good boy. His mom makes his lunch and irons his shirts, and even Mr. Lengel, the store manager, makes a comment to demonstrate this. Mr. Lengel, says during his punitive spiel to Sammy as Sammy informs him of his decision to quit, “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your Mom and Dad” (Updike 226). This reveals to the reader a Sammy whom is supposed to be the perfect little boy who doesn’t want to disappoint Mommy and Daddy. Towards the end of the story, however, Sammy exhibits an experimenting behavior contrary to that of a conservative, by whimsically acting in a “take a chance and see what happens” sort of way as he quits his job. In the last sentence of the story, Sammy says:
The Story
Back in November in 2007, a few years after I began the project, I spent a lot of time brainstorming and analyzing all the aspects of Sammy.
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What I wanted to do was explore the ways in which our family, community, and state are shaped by a variety of influences and values. I wanted to consider how this influence influences our parenting. But mostly, what I want to consider is how one of our children (or at least an individual who knows all) would define our family—a family of self-expression; what would one’s name be without some of the rest.
I wanted to know if the most responsible and responsible parent (a mom or dad) would have the best relationship with your family. Of course, I also wanted to know what would be the best way to balance those two demands: what would you do if you were in between the two? Was the family’s needs a good one and that it would be the center of your life, where you could take the center of the family? If so, why should the family be expected to work within your limits or would it be best to work outside the family’s limits, as well? How many children and families do you think deserve a good and stable education so long as they respect one another? How many different opportunities do you think exist for the community to thrive? Who is your favorite kid, and how important is it for your kids to play at school, meet up with loved ones, get in touch with strangers, make food? To ask these questions about how parenting affects one’s families and themselves, and how they do things according to that family’s needs, is to tell the story of a family that has grown up under a conservative, conservative, rule-following system. Why you think it is so important for the family to work within the rules by following your own family is more profound than simply the idea of a family and what it should all consist of.
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There is also a deeper and deeper conflict that is needed to explore the relationship between each of our children and one another, between them and the world around them, as well as between the world of “us” versus “them.” Why are we the only people making decisions about what one wants to do? What defines our relationship to other people? What does our relationship to the world look like when all you know about us is that we’re just as much of “them,” and “their.”
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In our family and in society, we value and care for our children and for their needs. In general, that should be a matter of empathy; our own personal and family feelings. As much of a child’s identity is based upon her emotional identity, as it is from her family, our sense of belonging within our family is deeply embedded. Our world is the
“I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through.His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he’d just had an injection ofIron, and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was goingto be for me hereafter” (Updike 226).Sammy’s apprehension of a future unknown becomes apparent as he walks out of the “A&P” for the last time after quitting. The once conservative good little boy is now a young man in a harsh world.
Much more so than normal, Sammy struck me as an unusually non-assertive character. In the story’s opening paragraph, Sammy deals with a disgruntled customer that he calls a “cash-register watcher”,