A & P by John Updike

When I first read the short story, I thought that this will be a story about a teenage admiration of a late adolescent (the protagonist, Sammy) and one of the three girls. After reading on, I could hardly decide. The protagonist's decision to resign from his cashier job at A & P was rather silly, but the readers were not directly introduced to his reasons behind making this decision. Even though the readers were brought into every bit of Sammy's thoughts of the three girls and his colleagues, this rather main point of his decision-making was not explicitly portrayed. While this omission intoduced ambiguity, which was rather annoying, it also indirectly characterized Sammy. As a 19-year-old teenage boy, he was easily distracted by the entrance of three girls in bathing suits, rather impetuous at his decision to resign without a plan and the portrayal of his strong ego at not correcting himself after he realized that the decision that he made out of a whim was a mistake. He was also rather confident as he thought that he could impress the girls by 'standing up' for them. He was rather naive to think that beauty and youth could triumph everything else, which he felt so strongly about that he voiced his resignation once that thought crossed his mind. However, like most teenagers, he finally managed to take an action and stood up for his thoughts rather than being a sarcastic observer that he always was, although his action was a rather wrong one.

All in all, even though the whole story is very real, there is a sense of oddity and irrationality in this story, which ironically parallels with reality, where the oddest yet most wonderful mistakes are often made.