Brent Hardy

English Comp II

A&P by John Updike

Character Analysis/Essay #1

 

     In the short story A&P, John Updike tells the story of Sammy, a clerk at a local grocery store who has an unflinching appreciation for beauty.  When Lengel, the store manager, embarrasses three girls who came in wearing bathing suits, Sammy stays by his convictions by quitting his job.  This coming-of-age moment makes Sammy realize what a man he is destined to become and causes him to look at how it will affect his life.  Sammy shows an appreciation for beauty, even that which is flawed, that he is willing to stand up for.

     As he watches the leader of the girls, or “Queenie” as he calls her, Sammy uses words that are poetic in nature instead of the usual coarse terms used by teenage males when referring to girls.  He does not talk about her as if she were only there to amuse him, but as if she were a piece of art he were admiring.  Sammy treats the girl in his mind like he would were he a connoisseur.  He savors the moment when she pulls the money out of her top to pay for her Herring Snacks.  He talks about how she walks in on her “prima donna legs,” and says that she is “more than pretty.”  Throughout the story, Sammy admires the girl as she walks through the store, and he feels sorry for her when the manager makes her blush as the climax of the story begins to unfold. 

     Sammy also admires the other two girls with “Queenie.”  He views the girl in the plaid two-piece bathing suit at the beginning as she walks into the store and even at the end refers to her as “the one he liked better from the back.”  As they walk through the store he notices her and her friend, whom he calls “striking,” a number of times with an attracted tone, not what one would usually use to talk about flawed beauty. Sammy views the girl with a teenager’s affection, looking beyond that which is flawed to see the beauty they both possess.

     At the climax of the story, Sammy is confronted with the dilemma of keeping his job by betraying his feelings for the girls, or quitting in their defense.  He chooses to quit his job, thus keeping with his convictions.  He leaves Lengel to tend the customers whom he looks on as nothing more than animals while he goes out to try and catch the girls whom he has just stood up for.  Sammy knows that his life will be harder for this act of insubordination, not only because “(Lengel’s) been a friend of my parents for years,” but because he knows now that he will stand up for what he feels is right and that is never an easy road to take.  He walks out of the store “hoping they’ll see me, their unsuspected hero,” because he has supported the right of beauty to simply exist and be admired by others.  It is not subject to the rules of authority, as personified by Lengel, but only to the simple reality that all things, even the flawed, are beautiful unto themselves.

     Sammy, in his own way, takes on the repression of art, not in a gallery or museum but in his own local convenience store.  He finds in his adolescent body a passion for the beauty possessed by three girls, and is willing to defy his boss to protect their duty to express that perfection of physical form in whatever media they so choose.  Sammy becomes the hero of three bathing suit-clad girls without them ever even realizing it when he goes out of his way to protest their embarrassment.

 

Word Count:  626