Theme Of Boredom In A & P

With Boredom Comes Self-Entertainment and Life Changing Decisions

In John Updike’s fictional story A & P, the main character and protagonist of the story, 19 year old Sammy, is in a state of boredom during his developmental growth during his time at his dead-end job, The A & P, Such state of mind can be seen in three different main points within the story: judging the customers of the A & P through internal dialogue, Sammy’s observations of the young female customers, and Sammy ultimately leaving his job.

One example of how boredom is the central theme of this story is when Sammy starts judging customers through internal dialogue, such insults can be seen on the first paragraph of the story when Sammy is ringing up a customer, “I ring it

She’s one of the cash register watchers, a witch in her fifties with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up. She’d been watching cash registers for fifty years and probably never seen a mistake before.” (Updike pg.32) Sammy begins by mentioning that she is a “cash register watcher[s]” meaning that this customer constantly tries to look for imperfections in the way that a cashier, in this case Sammy, goes about providing customer service. Sammy then continues by comparing the customer to “a witch in her fifties” and begins to describe her disfigured face. Sammy then goes on to describe her as someone who in fifty years of watching cashiers, her pent up aggression was let loose on the first cashier to slip up and make a mistake, which happened to be Sammy. Although the customer was not impressed by his service, Sammy doesn’t necessarily say how severe the encounter was and what “giving me hell” truly meant, thus leaving the possibility that it could have been a situation that was overdramatized in Sammy’s thoughts as a way to entertain himself from boredom. Another example of Sammy’s boredom induced judgements can be seen in the first sentence of the second

Sammy then has an internal dialogue that takes sides with the girls and in a rebellion against the “policy” Lengel mentioned, regardless if the girls really had the same sort of rebellious spirit of Sammy or if they just stopped in to or from a beach and trying to avoid confrontation and hoping to leave soon. As the girls leave the convenience store Sammy yells “I quit” as if the girls symbolized freedom from his boring dead-end job, hoping that the girls will take him with them and help him run away from the day to day “cash register watcher” routine; feeling that he was too young to work that hard, too young to die that fast. While Sammy was preparing to leave the store “Lengel sighs and begins to look very patient and old and gray. He’s been a friend of my parents for years. ‘Sammy you don’t want to do this to your mom and dad,’ he tells me. It’s true, I don’t. But it seems to me that once you start a gesture, it’s fatal not to go through with it. I fold the apron, ‘Sammy’ stitched on the red pocket, and put it on the counter, and drop the bow tie on top of it.” (pg. 432) at this point Sammy is threatened by Lengel’s blackmail, but isn’t faced by it and proceeds to drop his uniform, symbolizing his growth from the small convenience store. As Sammy walks through the door of the A & P he turns around and sees Lengel’s face, “His face was dark gray