Updike's "A&P"

I read Updike's “A & P.” I laughed at the end of the story. I’m sure that is not the reaction that he wanted to get from his reader. But I’m no average art critic or media/ literature connoisseur (I laughed watching Saw II). I guess to some degree, I felt bad for the narrator because he quit his job for no reason. He lost his job and he didn’t get the girls. Dag. The things men do to try and impress us! *Sigh.* If they only knew, we don’t want guys without jobs, which means that even if the girls would have saw him quit his job they would not given him the time of day. No girl wants a broke brotha. PS: This story was boring. It was waaay too descriptive and a there lot of pointless jargon. Updike needs to take a lesson from Dickinson and Hughes, simplicity and clarity make for a way better read. Perhaps I should dig a little deeper into this short story, I’m sure that there is something worthwhile; I just didn’t catch it the first time.


The reader doesn’t get too much insight on the details of the narrator’s life. Besides the fact that he is eighteen years old, that he has a family and that he works at A & P, the reader has little to work with. What the reader does know; however, is that the narrator quits his job. He does this in hopes that he will get the attention of the girls who inspired him to quit and so on the surface, it seems as if the narrator from "A & P" quit his job to impress them. However, a closer look at what happens suggests otherwise. In the last sentence of the story, the narrator says that his “stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.” This implies that since he now understands injustice and realizes that he must stand up for what is right; he accepts the reality that his life will be a lot harder now that he has quit his job in the name of justice. The type of transformation that can be observed in this narrator is shown in the narrator is most apparent in his attitude towards the three girls in the story. In the beginning he describes them as objects and is just an objective observer of them. He labels them “the fat one,” “the chunky one,” etc. This objectivity somehow warps into an affinity for them; the narrator refers to them as “his girls.” The fact that the narrator began the story with “You never know for sure how girls' minds work (do you really think it's a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glassjar?)” but ends up quitting his job to stand up for these girls, demonstrates a genuine transformation.