| The NCR RealPOS is a Multi-user Point of Sale system responsible for the management of Inventory coming and out of all the stores.…
Sammy, the leading character and narrator of “A&P” by John Updike, is a young cashier in an A&P supermarket. Sammy is a working class dreamer trying to find his way in life. He devotes a great part of his narrative to describe his unpleasant job. Indeed, the story takes place inside the supermarket on a summer day; three girls in nothing but bathing suits come into the store while he is working. One of the girls catches Sammy’s eye. Feeling overwhelmed by her beauty, he nicknames the girl Queenie. Her two piece bathing suit was unacceptable to the conservative supermarket crowd, especially to Lengel, the manager. While Queenie and Lengel argue about store policies, Sammy sees the opportunity to seize the day. Fascinated about the unique aspects of the girls, he decides to take a stand against the pattern of his boring life. He doesn’t know how; however, he uses the conflict about the bathing suits as an excuse to take action.…
The infamous, and somewhat scandalous clothing the young girls were wearing into Lengel’s A&P grocery store stood for more than just articles of clothing. These girls chose to wear these bathing suits to represent the power they believed they maintain due to their social ranking. Likewise the bathing suits represented their identity of rebelling against social norms and standards. Queenie and her friends used the bathing suits to attract more attention to themselves, showing off not only their features but the power that their features and choice of clothing had. In some ways you could say that looking attractive was a form of power.…
In the beginning of the story Sammy seems discontent with working at the “A & P” grocery store as a cashier but he settles to society’s way of life and acts content. When he describes the A & P environment and its customers, which he refers to as “sheep”, it seems pretty monotonous. Nothing ever happened at A & P, every day the “sheep” pushed their carts in an orderly fashion, following the traffic, scratching off their grocery list as they went down the aisle, and did what was considered proper and acceptable by society. The sheep followed society’s rules and its way of life without any questions or doubts as if they yearned for some type of approval from society. One Thursday afternoon three girls entered A & P with nothing on except for their batting suites. One of them, Queenie, especially stood out to Sammy as he observes the girls walk around the store and observes how their presence seems to alter the atmosphere in the store. He becomes aware of how Queenie and the other two girls walk independently with a sense of individual control against the usual A & P traffic. At the sight of the three girls the sheep react with a puzzled shock and then go back to their acceptable daily routine trying to avoid the girl’s independent behavior and overlook their individuality. As the girls were trying to…
The setting plays a large part to the understanding of why the “three girls” in “bathing suits” are so criticized and judged. The main character Sammy, a cashier worker, sees the three girls walk into the A and P wearing “nothing but bathing suits” and instantly takes a sudden interest and starts checking out the girls. The reason Sammy and others take sudden interest in the girls is because they are not dressed for the place, the social environment,…
First of all, in the beginning of the story, Sammy mainly describes the three girls wearing swimsuits caught everyone's attention in A&P. “In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits… The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece…” (1-5). The three girls catch Sammy and every other person’s eyes. They are shocked by what the girls are wearing, because barely anyone has done such a thing before. This shows us that the people in this town always follow the rules. Also, there is another important character in the story. According to Sammy, the old register…
When the girls walk in Sammy attention was quickly caught by the females and their different choice of clothing. The females are dressed in bathing suits but the beach was 10 miles outside of the town that they lived in. Sammy says it was their act of non-conformity that drew his attention. Sammy did not want to grow up and end up like his co-worker Stokesie which had a wife an two children but still worked at the A&P grocery store, but that’s the road Sammy seen his self drifting into. To Sammy the girls represented something bigger than just rebelling against the rules it was that they represented excitement inside of his boring town. The excitement that made his boring life more interesting, an exciting life that would pull him from his irony fate of growing old and having a life-long career at “A&P” and in order to join the lifestyle he would have to be initiated into it. First, before he began his rites of passage he identified the leaders of the group which he nicknamed “Queenie” luckily it was the one he wanted to impress because he desired her as soon as she walked in the store so determining to take the rite of passage when presented to him would be a “no brainer”. She was followed by he accomplish in non-conformity which were to girls that Sammy nicknamed “Plaid” and “Big Tall Goony Goony” which spotlight was blocked by the spotlight of Queenie which look the best of the bunch. In the store the store manager confronts the girls about the attire they have chosen to wear in the store he tell them it is against the dress code which erupts an verbal argument against the store manager, Lengel and the leader of the group Queenie inside the store. When Sammy see the argument he thinks back to the time he wanted to created a verbal argument with Lengel and becomes even more drawn into Queenie’s lifestyle and when Lengel kicks the…
Costumers must always wear shoes and shirt for service. Queenie and her friends went in bathing suits, therefore breaking the supermarket policy and "disrespecting" themselves.…
The primary conflict in the story “A&P” by John Updike, is the inner conflict that Sammy is faced with during his encounter with the young girls in bathing suits. As a young man he has always did what was expected of him and shown to be an upstanding young man. After he experienced the actions of how his manager treated the young girls, due to them not adhering to society’s standards of dress for the time; he became angry and expressed this anger by removing himself from the manager and his narrow point of view. Sammy wasn’t sure what he did was right but he felt it was right at the time because he wanted to rebel. This was probably the first time in his life he ever really stood up for himself or anyone else and now he is faced with the repercussions…
Dr. Randy Laist implies that the three women were the wake up call or reality check Sammy needed. Laist refers to the three women as witches for exerting male authority. He piggy-backs off of Sammy mentioning " ...if she 'd been born at the right time they would have burned her over Salem."; Referring to the Salem witch trials that women are a symbol of sexuality, conformity, rebel and youth. The girls got scolded for not covering their midriffs and not wearing shoes. In my opinion this symbolizes the ladies getting penalized for not being uniformed as the rest of the A & P customers (or society). As the girls exited out of the store Sammy walked out of the A & P and watched them…
The setting Sammy finds himself in on this particular day contrasts the per usual normalcy at the A&P. His beginning description defines the uniqueness of the occasion “In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits” (187). Sammy’s intricate and itemized description of the three girls gives us the first insight into his mindset, and the irony of the artificial environment converse to the natural state of the girl’s attire. At this point, Sammy has directed much attention toward the girls. His focus on the girls sets the stage for itemizing his priorities “I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not” (187). His ever-glazed and intricate attention toward the girls births assessments and descriptions itemizing their…
In “A & P,” Sammy is this non-wealthy, normal guy who works in a grocery store. During this time, in 1961 there was a change occurring that involved ethics and morality. Also, money was something that became a luxury, and it became something you had to have in order to be approved in society when it came to different classes: upper-middle class and high class. One day when Sammy was working, a set of girls came into the store dressed in bikinis. One of the girls had her nose turned up, and that gave an automatic reaction to those around her as to how her attitude was. After being in the store for a while, the girls start to get harassed because of how they were dressed. Sammy did not like it that much because he thought the girls deserved a lot more respect than what they were receiving. The more aggravated he got, the more he…
Updike 's “A&P” is an interesting story of attitude and the male ego. Sammy, being young and obviously very observant, describes in first person point of view the events that lead up to him quitting his job. The theme of “A&P” is central to the idealistic and moral values of young verses old. As represented in the difference of attitude towards the girls regarding the wearing of swim suits in the local grocery store. While the girls are strolling through the various aisles, Sammy is enthralled with the appearance with one girl more than the other two. He apparently does not have an issue with the attire of the girls. Moreover, he is better inclined to allow his hormones to control the situation. This is evident by the way Sammy describes the three girls, each one with a unique style and flare. An example of this would be the way in paragraph 1 and 4 where he refers to the backside of one of the girls as a “can”. A contrast to that description would be the way he describes Queenie. Immediately noticing that the straps of her suit were down tells the reader that in Sammy 's mind the girls were objects of fixation and mere physical gratification. The second paragraph shows this very well when Sammy compares the minds of girls to a buzz like a bee in a glass jar. In the opinion of this reader Sammy is no more than an over sexed teenager wandering through the toils of his daily life at work fantasizing about every pretty face he sees.…
In the Cult of True Womanhood, women are supposed to follow the four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity (Welter). With these four cardinal virtues men had a better understanding on the way women were supposed to behave. In A&P there are three girls that walk into the store. Sammy is immediately captivated by the girls. He gives each one a name, he names them Chunky, Queenie and Plaid. Sammy is head over heels for Queenie she is the prettiest one out of the three. He describes her with having two scoops of vanilla and her bathing suit straps hanging off her pale shoulders. Lengel see how Sammy reacts to seeing the girls and he doesn’t stand for hit. Sammy is so captivated by these girls that he rings up a costumer’s item twice, from not paying attention. The girls walk up to Sammy’s register and Lengel steps in and begins to scold the girls. Lengel tells the girls they must be decently dressed when they come into the store. He tells them that their shoulders must be covered, and that their bathing suits in unacceptable to wear in the store. The girls broke all the rules of the 1960’s when they walked into the store like that. They did not follow the four cardinal virtues of the Cult of True Womanhood. That’s when Lengel had to put his foot down and step up as the male figure and the government and lay down the policies for the girls. He put them back in their place as women when he scolded them. The girls tried to argue their piece a little bit before being shut down again.…
Sammy has a crude and chauvinistic attitude towards the three young girls who enter the store wearing only bathing suits. He meticulously surveys and judges every inch of their physical appearance, from the texture and…