Short Story: A&P

Overview

John Updike's "A&P" is a concise, commonly anthologized short story narrated in the first person by Sammy, a sardonic nineteen-year-old grocery clerk. Set in a small New England town in the early 1960s, the narrative compresses a single, pivotal afternoon into a sharp snapshot of class, conformity, and youthful defiance. The title names the supermarket chain where Sammy works but also stands in for the broader commercial, social world he inhabits and ultimately rebels against.

Plot

Three young women in bathing suits enter the A&P and walk the aisles, drawing the curious eyes of shoppers and the wry commentary of Sammy, who catalogs the store's rituals and regular customers with a mix of humor and contempt. The girls' leader, whom Sammy dubs "Queenie, " strides with a blend of confidence and indifference that unsettles the mundane order of the store. When the store manager, Lengel, publicly reprimands them for violating an unstated code of decorum, he embarrasses the girls and asserts authority in front of the customers.
Sammy reacts impulsively: he quits his job in a dramatic gesture meant to defend the girls' dignity and to stake out his own moral identity. His resignation, delivered with theatrical flourish, aims to shame Lengel and to impress the girls, but the expected gratitude never arrives. The girls leave quietly, untouched by his act, and Sammy is left alone in the fluorescent-lit aisle to face the immediate, practical consequences of his choice. The final image, Sammy walking out into the parking lot and the uncertain future beyond, captures a mixture of pride, humiliation, and dawning realism.

Characters and Style

Sammy's voice drives the story; his irreverent, observant first-person narration turns ordinary supermarket details into cinematic tableau. Updike's prose is economical and sensorial, using small particulars, the hum of fluorescent lights, the smell of coffee, the posture of customers, to render both place and psyche. Lengel represents institutional authority and conventional respectability, while the girls embody a youthful freedom that both attracts and confounds Sammy.
The narrative's tight focalization through Sammy's perspective creates irony: readers see his bravado and self-image, but also the naiveté behind his motives. Sammy's character is not a clear-cut hero; he is theatrical, self-aware, and uncomfortably vulnerable. The contrast between his romanticized notions of rebellion and the banal reality that follows amplifies the story's emotional impact.

Themes and Ending

"A&P" explores the collision between individual impulse and social expectation. Sammy's defiant act reads as a rite of passage, an attempt to claim moral autonomy and to reject the passive consumer roles that the supermarket symbolizes. Updike probes the performative aspects of rebellion: Sammy's gesture is as much about being seen as being right as it is about genuine solidarity. Class and gender undercurrents run through the episode, with the women's bodies and behavior triggering a range of responses from desire to moral policing.
The ambiguous ending resists simple triumph or condemnation. Sammy gains self-knowledge at the cost of security, stepping into adulthood with a clearer, harsher view of how the adult world responds to challenges to its order. The story's economy, ironic tone, and finely observed details make "A&P" a lasting study of youthful rebellion and its social consequences, a snapshot of a moment when one small act crystallizes a larger understanding of power, identity, and compromise.