of other women in the town.

In addition, the store is near "two banks and the Congregational church," which helps show the store is situated in a very civilized, very reserved area. Yet, the girls are acting in ways that the citizens would consider to be the exact opposite of civilized and reserved, further explaining the shocked reaction the girls incite.

Another aspect of the setting that helps explain Sammy's reaction, especially his decision to quit, is that the town is near Boston. Boston is a very metropolitan area; the type of location that is very sophisticated, yet also the type of area that has seen it all, every strange antic a human being is capable of. The fact that the girls are buying herring snacks also helps characterize their own sophistication. In Sammy's mind, Lengel's choice to argue with the girls, rather than just reprimand them and let the matter drop, thereby embarrassing them, was far from sophisticated and far from metropolitan. In Sammy's opinion, Lengel behaved in a manner that was the exact opposite of the girls' manner and the exact opposite of how those in Boston might react. Therefore, the reference to Boston helps explain Sammy's reaction: In Sammy's mind, Lengel pushed the matter much too far.

Sammy is aspirational, and the A&P represents to him his working-class environment. He feels contempt for the housewives who shop in the store. He doesn't want to be a cashier—we learn that he works there because his family needs the money he brings in.

When the three girls from the glamorous nearby summer beach community come in, led by Queenie and wearing only their bathing suits, Sammie perceives in them a self-confidence that is not a part of his working-class milieu. Knowing nothing about them except that have the audacity to enter the A&P wearing whatever they want, he weaves a story in his mind which is a fantasy account of their sophisticated upper-middle-class lives.

When his manager chides them for their undress and Sammy sees the drabness all around him, a desire for more—and an identification with and yearning to be like the girls—overwhelms him. He feels he can no longer accept his lot, and so he quits. Had he worked in a more glamorous place that fed his aspirations, he might have thought twice about leaving—but the A&P represents all he wants to escape.

"A & P," a short story by John Updike, was first published in the New Yorker in 1961. In this period, the New Yorker was aimed toward a well educated, affluent audience in the New York area, many of whom owned or rented summer homes in neighboring beach communities.

The story does not mention the specific name of the town in which it is set, but given the references to the nature of the small town with a Congregationalist Church located "north of Boston,"one can imagine the setting as one of many resort areas near either Cape Cod or Maine, where there is a strong distinction between the locals and the summer people. 

More specifically, the scene takes place inside an A&P, a chain supermarket frequented mainly by locals, whom the narrator describes in rather unflattering terms. The general clientele of the A&P is conservative and working class, and the locals who frequent it resent to a certain degree the wealth and perceived bohemianism of the tourists. 

Sammy is attracted not only sexually to the three girls, but also to the degree of freedom and glamour that he associates with life beyond his small town. Even though his family needs the income from his job, more important to Sammy at the moment is the commitment to follow through on his grand gesture of quitting in response to the manager's bad treatment of the girls (a gesture the girls don't even notice). The gesture in a sense repudiates the setting of the novel, rejecting the world of the small town A&P and reaching out to the wider world represented by the three girls. 

The story is really about young men’s fascination with young girls. Updike was an art student before he became a writer. His visual sensitivity is apparent in his stories. "A & P" is a picture of a supermarket in a small resort town. He brings the three girls into the store to create drama. It is definitely “small-town” drama. The drama is only there to intrigue the reader—but the real purpose of the story is to paint a picture. Without the three girls the piece would be just a sketch. It would be hard to interest a reader in a simple description of the inside of a small-town supermarket in the middle of an uneventful summer day. The girls also give a visual focus to the work because Sammy's eyes follow them around the store, up and down the aisles with which he is so familiar. The title of the story suggests that this is not so much about the people as it is about a typical American supermarket.

Updike's story is especially valuable in that it demonstrates a truth about writing. It is easy to get readers to visualize things they are familiar with, and very difficult to get them to visualize things with which they are not familiar. That is why there are so many analogies, similes, and metaphors in poetry and prose fiction. That is why we ourselves us so many analogies, similes and metaphors in our own conversation.

Updike's task was easy in "A & P." We have all seen supermarkets with their aisles loaded with colorful cans, packages and bottles. We have all seen those shoppers pushing their carts up and down the aisles and then lining up with such docility at the checkout counters. We have all seen women like the one in the story who watches the cash register hoping to catch the checkout clerk in a mistake. We can easily visualize the store manager because they all look so much alike, dress so much alike, and seem to be trying to be visible and invisible at the same time. And we can visualize those two boys checking out the customers and checking out those three girls. We have all seen girls like the ones Sammy describes, and we have seen them in bathing suits, bold and self-conscious, walking gingerly in their bare feet--but not usually inside stores, even today! 

I don't think we should attach too much importance to the happening but should enjoy the experience of being transported in our imaginations into a little world for a few moments. We feel sympathy for most of the little people involved, including Sammy, the store manager, the shoppers for whom this trip is the biggest event of their day, and for the three girls for whom this big adventure will end in success and embarrassment. It is a Norman Rockwell kind of setting, with Norman Rockwell characters, and even a Norman Rockwell message about life in the United States.

John Updike's story "A & P" is all about the setting. If the story had not occurred in a grocery store in a beach town with the dubious hero, Sammy, being a clerk in the A & P grocery store, the story could not have happened. Without this setting (or one very, very much like it), the scantily clad girls could not have come in and wandered down the aisles causing the hero and other clerks to salivate over them while they discussed food purchases. In addition, the teen age hero could not have been distracted from his work with thoughts of chivalry. Moreover, the manager could not have had occasion to reprimand the girls for their attire and request they vacate the premises.

Furthermore, if the manager had not done this, there would have been no occasion for our slightly confused hero to enact his wild imaginings (which fall flat around his properly clad feet in the parking lot) by symbolically removing his attire (his clerk's apron) and quitting his job to champion the rights of the girls who walk away leaving him in cold oblivion in an unpopulated parking lot. The setting is the backbone of John Updike's pathetic tale of a pathetically illusioned youth.

It is certainly open to interpretation as to why Updike uses Sammy as the narrator in his short story "A & P." This is my perception.

This often anthologized short story is generally seen as a coming of age or "initiation tale." In keeping with this theme, by the story's end Sammy realizes that (in some way) this incident and his actions mark a turning point in his life.

Sammy is important as a narrator because he has yet to see the world from a wider lens as almost everyone eventually must when they "grow up." At his age, the world is about today: it's summertime and he's working at the supermarket with a guy who is married but still acts like a kid. He really has nothing to worry about.

When "Queenie" enters the store, everything seems to stop: like it only can in a movie...or in the mind of a teenage boy. She is a welcomed diversion from his tedious world of canned goods and housewives.

Sammy and Stokesie joke for a minute, but then Sammy is amused to see Stokesie come around and get in touch with his "responsible married man" side, as he attempts to act like the store manager he hopes one day to be.

Sammy is young and inexperienced. It appears that what he does is based on principle. However, he also wants to impress the girls.

...I say "I quit" to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they'll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero. They keep right on going...

It is perhaps for this reason that Sammy's character is appealing to readers of all ages. Like many kids his age might, he sees the manager, Lengel, as an inflexible sort—the enemy without a heart. He describes the older man as "pretty dreary, teaches Sunday school and the rest..." This seems more insult than praise...at least from someone Sammy's age.

Sammy's parents see the entrance of the girls as "the sad part of the story..." However, Sammy does not agree: he cannot see what his parents see. This is very much evident when he reflects upon Lengel's discussion of the store's rules:

"It's our policy." He turns his back. That's policy for you. Policy is what the kingpins want. What the others want is juvenile delinquency.

Sammy's statement literally separates the men from the boys. In his eyes, it is all about the establishment and the "delinquents." Sammy cannot imagine what it is like for Lengel who has to answer to his bosses. If Lengel wants to keep his job, he does not have the luxury to wave the rules for the cute teenagers that come in bathing suits; it is safe to assume that at one point in his life, he probably saw things as Sammy does but those days are long past. Lengel knows what he must do as manager of the story, mired in responsibility when one cannot quit a job so casually.

Lengel cautions him, noting that Sammy may not be sure of what he is saying. Sammy acknowledges that Lengel may see it that way, but Sammy says he does know what he is doing.

Lengel, a friend of his parents, tells Sammy not to do this to his parents. Sammy has an uncomfortable moment because he does not want to do anything to upset his folks. At the same time, his pride is on the line:

But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it.

Sammy makes a clean exit.

Sammy's perception of what he is leaving behind and what lies ahead can be found in his description of Lengel and his own response as he glances through the store's window:

I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through. His face was dark and gray and his back stiff...and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.

Had Lengel been the narrator, the tale would have been much different. However, Updike uses Sammy as the narrator—his inexperience with the world and his youth are what allow him to unthinkingly brush the summer job aside. However, Sammy intuitively realizes (it would seem) that he, too, will someday be in Lengel's place, and that is not an easy place to be.