While we are shown the fact that Sammy, ogles the girls and makes a queen of the leader. On one hand while he feels no pang in doing so he is disgusted by the butcher's lustful gaze. (Saldivar, 214)
There is rebellion when the manager who is a puritan rebukes the girls. The only outrage that the manager, Lengel, seem to have done is to make the queen blush. Thus Sammy quits his job against an authority that demeans people. The girls seem neither to have noticed the managers' consternation or admonition nor have they noticed Sammy standing up for them. Sammy gains nothing but loses his job in the bargain. (Saldivar, 215)
There was parody of other works for which Updike is noted. Here in this story too, apart from Araby we find the parody of the classic Vanity Fair. Parody of the Vanity Fair can be seen in the way Updike hints at American Christianity by writing of the three girls stroll through the aisles of the A&P inappropriately clad, in a parody of Bunyan's pilgrims in Vanity Fair. Further the girl Queenie's approach to the checkout stand, as per the character Sammy, is when Lengel, the store's manager, confronts the girls at the register, and there is mortification f the girl. That is where at the checkout stand, Sammy witnesses Queenie's discomfiture with great...
As a gallant gesture he makes many promises. This is comparable to Joyce's boy in Dublin where the hero like Sammy offers a gift. In the face of the mortification of his adored object. (Wells, 128)
It can be said that the literature is the mirror of the society and the artists mind. Thus in comparison with more recent works the problem of Sammy is the singular way the inadequacy of the cultural norms of the times and the way the youth chose to express sexuality and simultaneously moral sensitivity. Updike's method is to wake the reader to the s dramatic irony. In a way it is argued that through the story Updike shows that the refusal of the demands that have been made in the official channel often drives a modern artist to solitary expression of his own desire made for its own sake. (Saldivar, 216)
References
Saldivar, Toni. The Art of John Updike's "A&P." Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 34, no.
2, 1997, pp: 212-216.
Walker, Michael. Boyle's "Greasy Lake" and the Moral Failure of Postmodernism.
Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 31, no. 2, 2002, pp: 245-251.
Wells, Walter. John Updike's "A&P": A Return Visit to Araby. Studies in Short
Fiction, vol. 30, no. 2, 1993, pp: 125-130.
