No Shoes, No Feminity In John Updike, A & P

When we visit groceries, we pay attention to our groceries because we don 't encounter awkward situations where the females wear clothing which would distract us from our groceries. Our normal task in the grocery would be to walk in and buy our necessary goods and leave. The story A and P by John Updike focuses on a grocery shop where three female characters walk in wearing their bathing suit and catches the worker’s attention including the manager. Sammy, a employee in the grocery store observes the females and shows his interest towards the girls. This story is taking place in small town where people know each other and often judge each other on their appearance and their personality.

1. In the novel, women are portrayed as mean and feared beings. They are somewhat compared to as evil monsters. An example of this in the passage is on pages 4 and 5. It says, “They sense she’s glaring down at them now, but its too late.

This crafts a story with a in-depth focus on the mind of a character, who makes the choice to rebel because of three girls wearing swimsuits in a grocery store. Therefore, the distinct voice that Sammy possess ultimately gives the story a feeling of youth and

The story tells the reader about how two girls, each owns a Barbie doll with their one outfit piece and they made a dress out of worn socks for the dolls. One Sunday, they both went to the flea market on Maxwell Street, where the dolls of the other characters in Barbie were sold with lower price as a big toy warehouse was destroyed by fire. They did not mind to buy the dolls at the flea market even though the dolls were flawed, soaked with water and smelled like ashes. Barbie is widely pictured as a successful girl, who is perfect in every way; with her beautiful face, a slim body, nice house, secured job and a handsome boyfriend which is the fancy of every girl. The story tells the reader of the expectancy for women to have this immaculate figure, ignoring the fact that each person has different body fat percentage and body mass index which may affect their sizes and weights.

In the short story “A&P” by John Updike, a nineteen year old grocery store clerk, Sammy, undergoes a right of passage that leads him into adulthood. This is also known as an initiation story. Sammy experiences a specific type of initiation into adulthood known as uncompleted. This type of initiation leads the main character across the threshold of maturity, which in some cases involves self discovery, while also leaving them entangled in uncertainty. Throughout the story, specific examples and symbols display Sammy's change from conformity to defiance to find what is morally right for himself.

In a westernized society children books are often guilty of aggressively reinforcing conventional gender roles by stereotyping the physical and personal characteristics of young girls and boys. This ultimately forces children who don’t comply with these stereotypes to be more vulnerable to bullying and self esteem issues. The book ‘Makeup Mess’ by Robert Munsch details and reinforces the materialistic and conforming stereotypes of femininity and what exactly it means to be a girl in the twenty first century. I personally choose to create a resistive reading of the book in the form of a satirical cultural jam. The book ‘Makeup Mess’ proclaims that in a utopian capitalist society young girls are destined to reform to the ideal of the ‘male gaze’,

“In walks three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I’m in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door, so I don’t see them until they are over by the bread” (Updike 142). “A few house-slaves in pin curlers even looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure what they had seen was correct” (Updike 144). These quotes set the tone for the story and shows these three new characters are certainly out of the norm and not what this small town grocery store is used to seeing. Updike uses some descriptive language that reveals his affection for the girls.

The young girls are dressed in two-piece bathing suits that are attracting a lot of attention. The girls go to check out, and are warned in a rude way by the manager to not come back into the store without the proper apparel being worn. Sammy views these people just like a teenager normally does, however if he was an adult he would have a different outlook on how the girls were dressed. Let’s start with the first customers that are talked about in the story.

An epiphany is a moment in life where someone has a sudden realization or an insight about an event. In “A&P” by John Updike and “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, both protagonists experience an event that lead to their own epiphanies. The epiphanies in both stories are very similar but are also different. In “A&P,” the protagonist, Sammy, is still young—just being nineteen years old—so he has a different view of his epiphany than the husband, the protagonist in “Cathedral”, since he is older and much more experienced in life. Both show that they are miserable with the life that they have but their lives will impacted by people who unexpectedly enter them.

The short story “A & P” by John Updike is set between 1947 and 1991 during the Cold war and a period when women were generally objectified. The protagonist of the story, Sammy, is a typical teenager boy with a part time job as a check out clerk at a grocery store called A & P and has a fondness for attractive young girls. The plot begins when the presence of three girls in bathing suits came in the grocery store intensely sidetracking Sammy and his co-worker away from their work. Due to enough distraction, the manager, Lengel, recognizes the delay in the till and hastily reacts on the problem by embarrassing and shaming the girls for their attire. Although Sammy shows that he disagrees with Lengel’s treatment of the girls by quitting his job,

In John Updike’s “A&P” the main character Sammy is working at the A&P grocery store when three girls walk in only wearing bathing suits. These girls caught his attention. He became intrigued by their features and longed to know more about them. The store manager embarrasses the girls making Sammy mad. Sammy threatens to quit his job while the store manager Lengal tries to change Sammy’s mind.

The character development of who shops in the store makes the reader aware of how inappropriately the girls are

In the short story, “A&P” by John Updike, Updike narrates through the point of view of a 19 year old cashier. Three girls enter the supermarket that the young man works at, in bathing suits, although they catch the attention of the cashier, the manger disapproves of their dress code in the store. The supermarket plays a vital role in Updike demonstrating the rebellion of the younger generation, by the girls not dressing conservative in public, the cashier’s fascination of their bodies, and the older manager disapproval. The first demonstration Updike used to show the teens rebellion was when the girls walked into the supermarket in just their bathing suits. The reaction of the young cashier and his coworker showed how unusual it was for girls to walk around in public with their bikinis on.

The girls come in nothing but bathing suits and with no shoes. Sammy describes the regular customers he sees when he mentions “women generally put on a shirt or shorts or something before they get out of the car into the street. And anyway these are usually women with six children and varicose veins mapping their legs and nobody, including them, could care less” (Updike).Sammy is excited because not everyday you you get to experience customers like three girls. (2) Sammy leaving his job symbolizes his first step to independence and a life full of adventures.

In the article, it stated how one school made young girls sit in a classroom and have an adult talk to them about inappropriate clothing. While the girls were inside being taught about dress codes and how not to distract a boy by what they wear, the boys got to go outside and play on the playground. The people teaching the girls basically were telling them it’s their fault because of what they are wearing, but maybe the real problem are the boys. The author also stated how she was sitting in the library doing homework wearing jeans and a baggy sweatshirt. A male teacher came up to her and told her to close her legs and that she was inappropriate.