Independence in Updike’s A&P and Welty’s Why I Live at the P.O.

Sammy, deemed to be the protagonist of the story, is nothing short of the typical nineteen year old, full of insecurity and self doubt, working an average job at a local supermarket. He’s desperate to break out of hometown, desperate to leave behind the people like Stokesie and Lengel, who he perceives to be just some “scared pigs in a chute”, but struggles to find an escape route. That is, until he encounters Queenie, a girl who lives a life Sammy can only dream of. Queenie resembles everything Sammy wants to be. She is a natural leader, hence the nickname “Queenie” awarded to her by Sammy. She’s also proud, and confident. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her and loves herself without apology. So when Queenie offers Sammy the opportunity to transform himself into the person he only dreamed of being; a rebellious, confident and fearless spirit with little regard for anyone else, Sammy jumps at it. As a result, Sammy makes a rash decision to quit, in hopes of following Queenie to her sophisticated world outside of the A&P supermarket. Sammy’s rash decision to quit was an attempt to escape, live a new and exciting life, but falls short when the girls leave him behind and reality slaps him in the

From the moment the girls enter, Sammy describes in massive detail their looks and the way they uphold themselves. As he devotes his entire attention towards Queenie and the other girls he loses focus off of his job requirements and makes a mistake.The reader learns that Sammy has been working at A & P for a while because he is familiar with his customers, the cash register and the aisle. For instance, in paragraph 1 he labels his customer a witch because he wasn’t sure if he

Most importantly, Sammy demonstrates that he is a dynamic character when he decides to quit his job. By the end of the story, Sammy realizes that he is tired of being surrounded by what is normal.

Many people face trials and tribulations day to day that mold them into the individuals they are destined to be. These could be positive or negative trials and tribulations, but either way, experiences ultimately are the major key to people’s growth and perception of the world around them. These experiences may be brought on by external factors such as who people surround themselves with (i.e. friends and relationships), neighborhoods and what is considered the “norm” for said neighborhood (i.e. gun violence, gang involvements, drugs, etc.), influences from parents or other caregivers and the amount of time they devote to the growing child. Many people are granted the same opportunity as others, but they let these extrinsic factors sway them from their destinations and wind up in situations based on how they handled previous situations. This idea is true in the novel The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates written by Wes Moore. In this novel, Wes Moore gives the detailing truth about how people are affected negatively by their decisions everyday, but also how positive influences such as role models and caring families have a positive effect on the development and destination of a child. The paths that both the Wes Moores took in life could have easily converged and been taken on by the other. No matter one’s predetermined outcome in life, his or her life can still be drastically shifted due to external influences and resources, much

Although it turns his life to unordinary, Sammy views the girls as a refreshing and escaping scene for himself. He was used to seeing the regular, ordinary customers that he referred to as sheep. Something about the girls demeanor when entering “A&P” left Sammy with a inspirational, riving feeling. Porter later in his article discusses why he thought Sammy quit his job, which ultimately made his life change. He viewed it as Sammy making a gesture as both a statement towards the girls decency and a rejection of “A&P” and the misdirected values for which the store held. The action that Sammy made was an exaggerated result from his youth. His action does not diminish from the simple goodness of his chivalric intent, nor does it take away the importance of his personal commitment. Although Sammy knows that he will feel this for the rest of his life and that he separated himself from the flock and the “A&P” crowd. Sammy chose to set himself against the majority. But Sammy also understood that he could not start something and not follow through with it whether it made his life ordinary or not. Once Sammy realized that not to follow the voice of conscience is to be false to ones own integrity and would be living a lie, he chose to live an honest and significant life instead.

Sammy, however, surprises us, just like the story does. His immediate infatuation with the girls and everything they represented (the youth he was quickly denying himself by being tied at such a young age to the very adult world of work) quickly brought him to realize that his life was still that of a young person. What he thinks is an act of bravery, which will certainly be awarded with the attentions of “Queenie”, turns out to be a solo act of personal assertion. Just when Sammie thinks his life is ending, it is truly just beginning.

On the surface, the hero of John Updike's much-anthologized short story "A&P" does not seem like a hero on the level of an Odysseus or a Hercules. Sammy is a cashier at a local grocery store. However, when three girls wearing bathing suits enter the A&P, Sammy begins to experience a call to action. For the first time in his life, he takes a stand when he feels as if the pretty girls are being treated with a lack of respect. Sammy feels the first stirrings of rebellion within him, as he chafes against the constraints of his life. Campbell divides the three parts of the hero's quest into a circular journey of departure, initiation, and return. Over the course of "A&P" Sammy makes his 'departure' into the world of the hero.

Queenie is important to the story's conflict and theme because she creates them. Queenie causes the main conflict when she walks into the A & P. The manager of the A & P yells at the young girls about their attire when the are being rung up by the Sammy. At the end of the story, Sammy stands up for himself by exclaiming he quits as the girls are walking out of the door. He does this because he hopes the girls will see him as a hero. As a result he loses his job and never gets the

Another piece of evidence of individualism and its negative effects is found in Sammy and his characterization. An illustration of this is found towards the end of the story when the manager, Lengel, is giving the girls a hard time because they are indecent. He doesn’t want the girls to check out, but Sammy is tired of it and then the story tells us, “I uncrease the bill… and pass a half and a penny into her narrow pink palm, and nestle the herrings in a bag and twist its neck and hand it over.” This shows that Sammy isn't afraid to go against the code of conduct. He was was willing to go against the rules of the store to so what he thought was right, and that was to let the girls but their snacks, which really shows that he stand out as an individual. Although at this point Sammy seems to have gone against social norms with no consequence, we soon see that this is not true. When Sammy says, “‘I said I quit.’" He gets his consequences. Lengel tells us these consequences: “‘Sammy, you don't want to do this to your Mom and Dad,’" and ‘‘You'll feel this for the rest of your life,’” These quotes tell us that Sammy’s Mom and Dad will be devastated by the loss of the job, and that the loss will hunt Sammy. Nevertheless, Sammy still chooses to quit his job. Why? Well because Sammy is an individual, who doesn’t always accept what society tells him he should do, even if ignoring it will get him into trouble.

As a toddler, watching the less wealthy lifestyle my parents’ siblings were forced to everyday showed me a life different from my own at the time. I couldn’t understand why it was dissimilar, but I knew that my destiny was not only going to be far from the lifestyle I had, but something even better. Becoming successful was not because I thought any less of my aunts and uncles, surely not only to benefit my future family, but to give back to those who built me this way by allowing me to perceive the pain that a financial struggle could cause. I was still too young to understand how my own sister was struggling with the same events that many of my aunts used as a justification to the twirling of a tornado full of poverty. A series of unplanned events caused an immediate second-guess in the prosperous future that my sister’s boyfriend, Alan, had when he revealed to his parents the shocking news of a fetus growing inside the woman who he would soon propose to. At such a young age, the disapproving reactions they received only created a serious appetite for a well-earned degree coming from not only Alan, but my sister, Byanca, as well. Who would have thought… In less than ten years after graduating from Sul Ross State University, and progressively raising three children, Byanca and Alan would soon become owners of a multimillion-dollar business. Much of this endurance was pursued to watch four blinding, pearl-like smiles, coming from their very own personal

Sammy, the teenage cashier in John Updike’s A&P is a seemingly quiet character. He seems to put up with his boss, Langel, make conversation with his co-worker Stokesie, and deals with sheep for customers every day on the job. On the outside looking in he seems like an average teenager in the 1950s, but inwardly despises and questions the society around his life. It seems that he will never speak his mind. That is, until one day when three girls his age walk into the A&P grocery store in bathing suits. This small change in routine is enough to throw Sammy off and change his life from hereafter.

It seemed insignificant at first but it’s actually important because that’s when Sammy gets a better idea who she is. He realizes that she is richer than he is and she’s in different class than he is. “Her father and the other men were standing around in ice-cream coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off of a big plate and they were all holding drinks the color of water with olives and springs of mint in them” that’s the imagination that Sammy has of her house and the type of place she comes from. He then realizes that her life is more pleasant compared to his where at his they drink lemonade or maybe Schlitz in a tall glass with cartoons on it. As he continues to imagine queenies life, he comes to the conclusion that that is life for him and that’s what he wants rather than working at the

John Updike, an excellent author of a short story presents us in A & P, a part of teenager’s life, easy to relate with everyone’s life. The picture, in which John Updike introduce his character, Sammy, as a responsible and mature young man which is working at A & P at the age of nineteen, conflicts with his rebellious actions and a behavior of typical American adolescent who is trying to overcome the growing pain of adolescence in search of individuality in a society in which following standards is mandatory and where talking or showing sexuality is a taboo.

Sammy idealizes being original and standing out without fear of repercussions. This is demonstrated throughout his thoughts and actions. But, it is more of a fantasy to him to be original. He works a mediocre job, with average people, doing average things such as being as cashier. He seems to have a yearning for more in life and yearns to be seen as great. It seems as if his desire to be successful and original is channelled into his views of others. He admires one of young girls dressed in a bathing

A&P is the story of a nineteen-year-old boy, Sammy, who is fighting against the expectation to blindly accept the social norms of society and follow the dull, routine life set before him. Sammy currently works as a cashier at the local A&P supermarket and describes the customers shopping within A&P as sheep, houseslaves and pigs being loaded into a chute. He yearns to be something more than a chain climbing employee like his co-worker, Stokesie, or his boss, Lengel, who haggles over cabbages and hides in the manager’s office all day.