Sammy In A&P
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Sammy In A&P
Character Analysis of Sammy
In the story, “A&P”, by John Updike we meet a nineteen year old boy by the name of Sammy. One day while working in the local A&P grocery store, Sammy sees three girls walk, in clad only in a two piece bathing suits. The girls and the way they are dressed cause quite a commotion among the customers. The manager, Lengel, tells the girls “…that this is not the beach and we want you decently dressed when you come in here” (563). Sammy tries to stand up to the way Lengel treated the girls by rashly quitting his job without giving much thought to the consequences. The town and role models of the sixties contribute to Sammy’s actions. His actions and attitude shows him to be a rash young man.
To truly understand why Sammy acts the way he does we first need to understand the values of his surrounding community. The setting of the story is in a small town north of Boston and is only about five miles from the cape. When one stands in front of the main doors to the store “you see two banks and the Congressional church and the news paper store and three real estate offices…” (562) this describes a typical New England town. The majority of these towns are very conservative in nature. People who live here would “generally put on a shirt or shorts or something before they got out of the car and into the street” (562). It would be appalling to walk in to a store without being covered up. The beliefs and thoughts of the local community become even clearer when the store manager tells the girls that it is the stores policy for them to be covered. He informed them that the next time they come into the store they must have their shoulders covered. Sammy, being the rebel that he is, turns his back to Lengel after what he told the girls and says, “Policy is what the kingpins want. What others want is juvenile delinquency,” meaning that he does not want to follow policy; he wants to rebel against it.
There are statements all over the story giving...
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