look, with the color and texture of their hair, their bathing suits, their posture, and their expressions, Updike succeeds in placing readers in the A&P through Sammy's eyes, where the story's action unfolds. The detail adds to therealism of the story and makes the conflict all the more plausible because readers don't have to work hard to visualize what upsets Lengel so much.

Updike really is a master of sensual description, allowing readers to see, hear, feel, taste and smell the surroundings created in his writing. He studied to be a visual artist which may partly explain his deft style in describing how things look. In this story, one of his most famous, the physical descriptions of the girls and the store are very naturalistic and authentic. The first-person narration is also reliable because it is not hard to imagine this teenage grocery store employee who has memorized the inventory and layout of the store, but who is also bored with his job and becomes excited when something out of the ordinary happens, especially if it involves teenage girls.

One line that describes an aisle the girls walk down says: "they all three of them went up the cat-and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-rice-raisins-seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-soft drinks-crackers-and-cookies aisle." The ease with which he names the items found in this aisle says he is intelligent, observant and has also made an effort to learn his job. But the description also hints at the dull sameness and regimented atmosphere of his job, in which he is expected to memorize the location of items. Anyone who has worked a retail job of this kind can relate to this idea. The store is an oppressive environment and so when he quits impulsively we know he has perhaps been waiting to find the courage to do so.

The narrator also describes what he calls the usual thoughts and behavior of shoppers in a very evocative way: 

I bet you could set off dynamite in an A & P and the people would by and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists and muttering "Let me see, there was a third thing, began with A, asparagus, no, ah, yes, applesauce!" or whatever it is they do mutter.

His perception of shoppers' thoughts, as well as the way he notices the girls and the way they shake up "business as usual" at the A & P, shows a narrator who is profoundly sensitive and observant. These descriptions ultimately are a very revealing look at the narrator who may well be based upon Updike himself.

The story was published in 1961, almost sixty years ago. However, many of the details of the A&P show that small-town chain grocery stores have not changed that much over time. Some details that seem true to life are the following:

I'm in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door, so I don't see them until they're over by the bread.

I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers ...

all three of them went up the cat-and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-rice-raisins-seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-soft drinks-crackers-and-cookies aisle

our checkerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor.

they come around out of the far aisle, around the light bulbs, records at discount of the Caribbean Six or Tony Martin Sings or some such gunk you wonder they waste the wax on, six packs of candy bars, and plastic toys done up in cellophane that fall apart when a kid looks at them anyway.

As I say, we're right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors you can see two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real estate offices ...

Paying close attention to the details helps establish this as a small, working class grocery store, not a giant flagship in the A&P chain. For instance, the three girls go up an aisle that holds many different kinds of items that would be separated into different aisles in a larger store, such as pet food, seasonings, pasta, and soft drinks.

Specific details add to our sense of realism, such as the HiHo crackers, the green and white tiled floor, and the records by the Caribbean Six. Simply mentioning "crackers," "tiled floors," or "records" would not place the reader as vividly in the scene as the specifics do. The details reinforce the idea that overall the store is a little bit cheesy and discount-like, making Queenie's choice of nothing but a jar of herrings, an upper-class purchase, stand out all the more. By providing all these details, Updike shows us the class difference between Sammy and Queenie—he doesn't then have to explain it to us.

The fact, too, that the details of the store are all visual adds to the idea that the A&P is simply a slightly tacky backdrop to a bigger drama that rivets Sammy. The ordinary, down-market details also contrast with the glamorous details of the life Sammy imagines for Queenie's family. These hum-drum details help us to understand why Sammy might want to escape this life and aspire for more—even though, as he acknowledges, he chooses a harder road when he quits.

The narrator's voice in John Updike's "A&P" is a very accurate depiction of a certain type of teenager, one who is forever qualifying his statements, adding asides and digressions, and even making allusions ("if she'd been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem"). Sammy gives a minute description of the three girls in bathing suits which eventually, by sheer accumulation of detail, makes this unlikely event seem real. Particularly realistic is the way in which he explains precisely why the occurrence is so improbable. The town is five miles from the beach:

As I say, we're right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors you can see two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real estate offices and about twenty-seven old free-loaders tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again. It's not as if we're on the Cape; we're north of Boston and there's people in this town haven't seen the ocean for twenty years.

All this description, which actually goes against the main thrust of the story by emphasizing why it would be so unlikely to see anyone in a bathing suit in this location, actually adds verisimilitude both by anticipating the reader's objections and by including just the sort of details that a sensitive, observant, and rather garrulous teenager (with more than a little of Holden Caulfield about him) would notice.

The Quixotic, illogical manner of Sammy's resignation is so thoroughly consonant with the character Updike builds up that we are not at all surprised when it comes, and the immediate regret is equally natural. The authenticity of the narrative voice renders everything true to life.

This answer to this question is based on individual reader opinion. Certain parts of this story are going to ring very true to life for many readers. Some readers, for instance, may find that the details that Sammy provides in the opening paragraph ring particularly true to life. Sammy is working at the store when three girls in bathing suits walk in. Sammy finds one of them very attractive, and he becomes so distracted that he can't remember if he rang up a particular item or not. The idea of feeling distracted by physical attraction will be relatable to many readers. Others, however, might find Sammy's description of the girls objectifying.

With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. I mean, it was more than pretty.

One could argue that while Sammy's attitude toward the girls might be inappropriate, it could be said to stand out as particularly true to life.

I also think that Sammy's final decision is quite true to life. His decision to quit his job is an emotional response to the situation. He knows it's probably not a good idea to quit. He needs the job, and his parents probably helped him get it; however, Sammy still goes through with quitting. This kind of emotional response is fairly typical of teenagers. This is because the emotional centers of their brains are done developing, while the logic centers don't finish developing until around age twenty-five. This is why teens tend to act on impulse a lot of the time.

Since at one point in my life I was a teenage boy, the entire story stands out as particularly true to life.  

"A & P" narrates the internal monologue of a 19 year old store clerk when a group of three bathing suit clad girls walk into the store.  It strikes me as particularly true to life that once Sammy sees that the lead girl, Queenie, is extremely attractive, that is all that he can think about.  

It also strikes me as true to life that most of Sammy's descriptions of the girls focus on their individual body parts.  I teach a media class, and one of the units that I teach is sexual objectification of women.  It's all over the place in modern media.  One key trait to a sexually objectifying image is that the image will focus on certain parts of the female anatomy and generally leave the face out of the picture.  That's how Sammy treats Queenie.  He describes her legs, her feet, her shoulders, her tan, and her breasts.  There is a single description of her face.  

 "a kind of prim face."

Updike's story is the literature version of most TV advertisements of today.  

The last part of the story that strikes me as true to life is Sammy's attempt to be a hero figure to the girls.  He quits his job as a way to stand up to his boss's treatment of the girls.  He thinks that it will win him some points with the ladies.  Unfortunately, it fails, because they don't even notice.  I feel that is true with a lot of males.  They imagine themselves as a sort of heroic savior to a damsel in distress, but it rarely works out that way in reality.