John Updike AandP

A detailed Summary of John Updike AandP

The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives forever. -John Updike (b. 1932), U.S. author, critic. Self-Consciousness: Memoirs, ch. 1 (1989)-

Innocence is a quality that is often taken for granted and abused. We never know when we lose it and it is seemingly gone forever. We are ignorant of our innocence until we realize that it has left us. Innocence is not ignorance, however it lacks knowledge in the same manner. It is based more on naivety or rather, the lack of experience we have. In John Updike's "A&P" the innocent of a local grocery store break through their blindness and daily routines in order to shed some light onto part of reality that they have been missing. This loss of innocence, and realization of such a loss, is John Updike's central theme in "A&P".

"A&P" starts with three girls walking into a grocery store wearing only bathing suits and immediately catching the eye of a young, nineteen year old named Sammy. The girls and Sammy are innocent yet in different ways. The girls seemed to be different to Sammy as they looked and acted as though they did not live in his town. The girls were ignorant of Sammy's local culture as they seemingly had spent the

The people who were startled by these girls were described by Sammy as sheep. I believe he called them sheep because these peoples' innocence was based upon their routines. "The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle- the girls were walking against the usual traffic- were pretty hilarious"(80). The status quo of this small town was disrupted by these girls in many different ways which led the sheep to become frozen from this tremor in their routine. Sammy's town daily consisted of local women and their children running erons, doing chores, goig to school, and many other common place routines of the "typical" late fifties suburban life. The girls did not fit into this town's innocent everyday habits and they turn the world upside down for the sheep, even though they were just their for minutes.

However, Sammy comes to realize that he was not alone in sizing up the girls when he says, " Mcmahon was patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints. Poor Kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldn't help it"(81). Not only were these young girls being judged, they were losing some of their sexual innocence as young and old men alike check them out as they paraded themselves throughout the store. Not only were men watching them, but housewives in the A&P can't help looking either.

The purchase, the fact that the girls had not known what they've done and Lengel yelling at the girls made Sammy rashly quit his job. Sammy quit in order to be the girls' hero, and to show the town that the girls had done nothing wrong. However, he didn't accomplish those two goals, instead he realized what happened to his own innocence. His job was taking away his innocent youthful ways. His bowtie and apron strip of the chance to be as free as the girls who he admired.

"The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two piece. She

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Approximate Word count = 1267
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels