Simple Sammy :: essays research papers

In John Updikes short story A&P, small town New England life is teeming with a whole lot of nothing. Sammy, the spell who tells all, seems really uninterested in his conjecture as a check out boy at the local anaesthetic A&P, yet very interested in the people who ca-ca there. He uses his boredom as a vehicle of his imagination that allows him to prize his customers open and expose their true selves. Updikes Sammy shows himself as an observant, critical and very bored young man through his start person narration.Updikes choice of commencement ceremony person perspective lends Sammy the ever powerful great power to quietly but relentlessly gather observations of the people and things around him. The first characters encountered are three girls in nothing but bathe suits(369). This purview would obviously catch the attention of any breathing male. But Sammy first takes in the 1 in the plaid green two-piece. She was a pudgy kid . . . with a sweet broad soft-looking can(369) . With these quick and close to likely soft-witted observations, Sammy exposes himself as a person who judges others found on appearances. As he takes note of the three girls, he sees the pantywaist with a kind of prim face. Walking into the A&P with your straps down, I suppose its the only kind of face you can lease(370). Sammys observations of the girls in bathing suits are not the only ones make throughout the story. However, the notice taken of the girls is the most kind. Perhaps through his mindless job of ringing up items, Sammy finds that making quick judgments of his customers through apprize interactions is quite entertaining. He sees one female customer as one of those cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrowsshed been watching cash registers for fifty years and probably never seen a mistake before(369). Sammy gathers this unfair judgment coarsely and without a great deal thought. He uses this same technique while watch ing the girls in bathing suits, for example, he thinks the older woman is a witch while he thinks that the girl with her straps down is the queen of her group. And why? Because its easy for him to take these things based on what he sees. He also sees a man in baggy gray pants who stumbles up with four devil cans of pineapple succus and wonders to himself what do these bums do with all that pineapple juice?