Sammy In A & P

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The A&P is narrated by a first person who is Sammy. Sammy is a 19-year old cashier at the A&P that lives near Boston. Sammy is a teenager who seems to work because they told him to and not because he wants to. He describes his point of view of everything and everyone who walks or is in the store, and tells the truth as he sees it. Sammy is clearly intelligent, although still uneducated at nineteen, and capable of creating striking images, such as calling a girl’s hair “oaky” and describing the sunlight as “skating around” the parking lot. He is opinionated, sarcastic, disaffected teenager with a healthy interest in the opposite sex and a keen observational sense. Sammy thought of his community boring with nothing to do. He sees most adults as "sheep" or followers “sheep pushing their carts down the aisle”, all indistinguishable from one another, and symbolizes every costumer. Sammy shows no interest in his job what so ever, he demonstrates that when he says he made up a song with the cash register sounds “hello (bing) there, you (gung)hap-py pee-pul (splat)”(Updike) Since he doesn't enjoy his job he looks for something to do, he is the kind of teenager who notices everything around him. One day at the store three girls walk in with nothing but their bathing suits he didn't hesitate to start analyzing them. He drinks …show more content…

He quit his job. For one thing, Sammy is now outside the A&P, looking in. Even though he left the store of his own will, it probably feels lonely to be shut out of something he used to be a part of. He's also outside the society the girls are in, a society that might encourage daring acts like wearing a bathing suit in public. As he looked inside and saw that Lengel was in his cash register he said “His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he'd just had an injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell.” There was no turning back for Sammy because they had already replaced

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