John Updike's A&p Character Aanlysis

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at the beach. Queenie and her friends were wearing swimsuits when they walked into the A&P, which was five miles from the beach and she was clearly challenging the limit of public acceptance of a decent behavior. Not that wearing a swim suit in public is enough, but the girls also walked against the “usual traffic” between the aisle, with Queenie leading the way. The way she “held her head so high that her neck…looks kind of stretched out” (Updike 376) shows that Queenie is pretty confident in herself and, proves that she is also trying to mock the housewives with “pin curlers” that was also in the A&P during that time (Updike 377). As if to show that she is like a blooming flower with a radiant white skin that “dawned” the other customers, Queenie, and her girls strode along the aisle with their bare foot. However, they clearly do not care about what other people think about their behavior. Updike also contradicts Queenie’s attitude with her other two friends, from Sammy’s point of view, they do seem a bit uncomfortable being the center of attention for something that they know is wrong. What Updike tries to tell his readers is, not all girls are bold as Queenie in provoking the social norm for being decent by taking the risks of being humiliated publicly.

In his effort to show the other side of Queenie, Updike twisted the plot by making Lengel, representing the older generation who is not happy with the idea that Queenie and her friends tried to portray, to come at the exact time when the girls were about to check out. In conjunction with that, Lengel’s character manages to awaken the innocent side of Queenie when she is admonished by him for not dressing properly. Queenie flinched and Sammy realizes the slight blush on her face, when she is confronted by Lengel and that is when her innocence of a normal teenage girl can be observed. She tried to defend herself by saying that she is only running an errand for her mother, showing that she is still an innocent damsel in distress who is still living with her parents. Having the same rebellious character as Sammy made her want to try something new. Other than her two girlfriends, Sammy was also inspired by her to try something out of the norm. Queenie had made his mere desire of being a hero for the girls to wanting to quit his job at the A&P.

Through comparison and examples that are given by Updike, we could say that the older generation had won the battle, as both characters of Sammy and Queenie who was representing the youngsters was forced to think back about the consequences of their actions. They did not realize that they would be regretting their immature actions, Sammy by quitting his job at the A&P and Queenie by not dressing decently in public and how it would affect their life in the future. Due to that, Sammy was going to have a bumpy road in finding his future career and Queenie with her memories of being humiliated publicly. Their characters’ endearing developments throughout the short story sparks the interest for readers to know what was it like to live fifty-five years ago with our grandparents’ generation, and that is what makes the story more intriguing.