• Central character: Sammy, the nineteen years old who works as a shop assistant at the checkout line at the shop, called A&P that is situated in a small New England town.
• Other characters: Queenie, a charming young lady who entered the shop in a bathing suit. It is not her real name, Sammy has given her that nickname. She was accompanied with two girlfriends.The girl nicknamed Plaid and the second Big Tall Goony-Goony. Lengel who works as a manager of the A&P, the one who embarrassed girls and Stokesie the checkout clerk, who is married and have two children.
• Setting: The A&P grocery store is in the center of the town, far from the beach.
• Narrator: Sammy himself.
• Events in summary:
– (1) Three, model like girls entered the A&P in swimming suits.
– (2) Sammy feasted one's eyes, as he saw one of the most beautiful girls he has ever seen, tall model, just a perfect girl who seemed to be the leader of their little group.
– (3) Sammy and Stokesie started a conversation about the girls, both of them eventually liked them.Sammy feels depressed because he was not married and did not have any children .He compares his life with Stokesie’s life. Sammy feels admired when the girls are about to check out at his checkout line.
– (4) Lengel noticed the girls, quickly rushed to Sammy’s third checkout slot and told the girls off for entering the store in bathing suits.
– (5) Sammy decided to quit his job as a protest against Lengel’s worthless deed. He hoped that the girl would be grateful to him, but she did not even notice it.
• Tone: The events are described in a light-hearted , seriously funny tone which is somehow connected with dark notes.
• Style: The writers style is portrayed through the narrator, Sammy, who uses mainly Present and Past tenses, he mixes his thoughts, he states them in the present then switches quickly to the past tense. In the first sentence, we can notice the grammatical error “ walks”, most of us would say “walk”, but this is the author’s idea to send the message across and to establish the connection between Sammy and Queenie.
• Irony: The end of the story is quite ironic in its point of view. Sammy resigned, he wanted to be a hero in girl’s eyes, he loudly stated that he could not work with people who easily harass such beautiful ladies.And the irony is that the girls do not hear Sammy’s words and simply do not notice his heroic deed.
• Theme: The theme of desire, the men had reacted on girls differently, Lengel, in order to lessen this power, told them off, while Sammy’s imagination forced him to make a serious step but this step turned out to be simply an illusion.
• Symbols: the bathing suits served as a reminder that the girls did not respect the rules and were not familiar with common rules of etiquette and social norms.
• Evaluation: John Updike has brilliantly described in his short story A&P the concept of heroism. Sammy is illustrated as a simple, young boy who gained victory upon himself. He did a brave deed, he acted as an adult man and he definitely deserves to be respected.
