FREE ESSAY ON A&P CHARACTER ANALYSIS

A&P CHARACTER ANALYSIS

Brett Hubbs
Dawn Brumfield
1123E
March 28, 2000
Character Analysis Essay
Sammy, in A&P by John Updike, plays a cashier at A&P grocery store. Sammy lives in a
small country town in New England. He must be a college or high school student because he
still lives with his parents. Sammy is quite intelligent and creative in the way he
describes three girls that are dressed in bathing suits. Sammy is at work when they catch
his eye. He is mesmerized by them and creatively names all of them by the way they walk
and their movements in the store. Sammy's character seems to observe people judgmentally
but he would never speak aloud to them about it to the people he was sizing-up in his
mind. Sammy could have been not such a popular guy in high school. He sounds, by the way
he talks, that he was a cocky loser with no friends when he was growing up in that small
country town. Even though Sammy criticizes the way the girls walk and their supposed
character in his mind he would like to meet them. The way Sammy talks about the girls
bathing suits and their bodies says that he might even pictured one of them naked. Sammy
doesn't know how to act around girls because he gets them into his checkout line and says
nothing to the girls. The way he acts around the girls hints that he may not have had a
girlfriend in a long time because he waits for them to talk to him. Sammy also has a very
heroic character at the end of the short story, when he wants to stick-up for the girls
before they leave the store. His boss Lengal, gets on to the girls for wearing their
bathing suits into the store and Sammy gets angry and tries to get Lengal to apologize to
them. Sammy's heroic character gets the better of his when he tries one last time to get
the girls to notice him by saying I Quit to his boss, but the girls leave anyway. Sammy
is a quiet opinionated guy that jumps into his actions before thinking them through in
his head.
Works Cited
Hubbs, Brett. Personel interview. 28 March, 2000.
Updike, John.