The short story A&P by John Updike is about a boy named Sammy who works at a grocery store called A&P, a small town in New England.
One day three girls come in the grocery store with just their bathing suits on and no shoes. Sammy admires them for their boldness and watches the girls every move until they come to his checkout lane to check out. When the three girls came to Sammy’s lane to check out, his manager Lengel sees the girl and confronts them about coming into the store with just their bathing suits on. After Lengel lectures the half-naked girls they leave.Just as they’re about to walk out the door, Sammy quits his job without thinking twice.
Lengel tries to convince Sammy that the decision he was making wasn’t a good one, but Sammy went through with his decision anyway. He ran out the store after quitting trying to catch up with the three girls, who had already vanished away. Sammy is a unique rebel with a cause because he stood up for his own personal opinion despite what anyone else said. A rebel is all about being an individual and refusing to follow a crowd that forces you to think the same way they do even if it means becoming an outcast to society.A true rebel stands up for what they believe is right not against what is right. In A&P Sammy refers to the customers in the store as sheep.
He calls them sheep because they all follow each other, bring in money, and come in packs. Sammy doesn’t want to be like the simple sheep in fact they irritate him. From the short story it states “All this while, the customers had been showing up with their carts but, you know sheep, seeing a scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie. ” In A&P there is no excitement everybody does the same thing.
Sammy says in the story “I bet you could set off dynamite in a A&P and people would by and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists and muttering. ” Sammy is tired of this he wish the sheep could be more like Queenie, who walks around in her bathing suits with her head up held. When Lengel sees the girls and preaches to them. Sammy gets mad he feels like the girls are bold and brave and that others should be like that too. It says “He didn’t like my smiling--- as I say he doesn’t miss much—but he concentrates on giving that sad Sunday – school- superintendent – stare.
Sammy didn’t like how Lengel was talking to the girls and that is why he quit. The girls had nothing to do with him, but he still stood up for them because it was something he felt was wrong. He stood up for what he believe in and wasn’t a sheep, more like Queenie. Sometimes standing up for what you believe is right, means standing alone and he did and as a result he has no job. Sammy is a unique rebel with a cause, the cause is his beliefs for his own personal opinion, and following them for once despite what anyone else said.
