A&P is a short story written by John Updike in 1961. A&P, or A Kind of Store, tells the story of a young cashier’s thoughts as he works through an average day at his local A&P supermarket. The protagonist, Sammy, befriends three girls who are dressed immodestly for the A&P, and he is given a warning by his manager. A fight ensues between Sammy and his manager over dressing policies in A&P supermarkets. The story ends with the girls leaving the A&P without incident as part of a larger protest against A&P’s dress code policy.
Updike’s use of setting in A&P includes many elements that give this short story an effective tone and mood to involve readers. One element of Updike’s use of setting is A&P itself as a store. The location, atmosphere, and customers reflect modern-day America at its best and worst: uniformed teens bagging groceries one minute, sexual tensions the next. A&P is also a theme in A&P, where it symbolizes the transition from adolescence to adulthood for Sammy when he fights with his manager about A&P’s dress code policy.
Another element of Updike’s use of setting in A&P includes the protagonist Sammy himself. Updike uses Sammy as an archetype, or model, for all young people who are caught between their desire to be responsible adults and their natural rebelliousness against authority figures that try to limit them.
The final element of A&P’s use of setting is the time and place: 1961 America. A time capsule of sorts, where pay phones stood on every corner and folks still dressed up to go grocery shopping. A time and place where young people were just beginning to question the previous generation’s rules as they themselves began to stand up for their rights as Americans and as individuals. A time and place where A&P supermarkets, with their bright lights, big-box brands, and abundance of choices served as a symbol for America itself; A&P represented change in progress before its very eyes.
The story was republished as part of the collection A&P and Other Stories (1962), which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction . A&P was included in Robert Atwan’s 100 Best American Short Stories , where it featured at number 24 out of 109 stories.
The A&P store is depicted as a “typical” 1950s food store: full of fresh produce and filled with white-uniformed employees and female shoppers. There are some glamorous features such as “plenty of mirrors”. The manager, Sammy, is described as a “calm and capable man”. A policeman comes in the store and begins to flirt with some of the young, attractive female patrons resulting in an embarrassing situation for one of the girls. The story ends when Sammy gives in to the pressure from three teenage girls and allows them to leave without paying.
A&P was adapted into a film by Sam Taylor starring Robert Redford, Paul Newman, and Lee Grant. A&P received positive reviews from multiple sources including ‘The New Yorker’ , who called it “a comic tour de force” . A number of literary critics have referred to A & P as a coming of age story because of what during the final lines of the A&P story, where Sammy describes the girls as entering womanhood.
A&P is one of John Updike’s most famous short stories. A&P was ranked number 24 out of 109 in Robert Atwan’s 100 Best American Short Stories . A&P has received positive reviews from multiple sources including ‘The New Yorker’ , who said it was a “comic tour de force” and a book reviewer for ‘The Sunday Times’ who called A & P a major contribution to modern American literature.
An appreciation of A&P requires an understanding of its setting. The story takes place in a supermarket and details the experience of three teenage girls who work at the store: Sammy, a cashier; Faye and her friend Helen. All three are bored with their job and uninterested in the protagonist Lengel, whom we do not know is the store manager at A&P until Sammy asks him. The A&P is a three-floor building, and we never see what’s in its basement.
The A&P functions the same as any supermarket: you take a shopping cart and put your items in it and pay for them at the checkout counter where Sammy works. The A&P has a small selection of goods: snacks, dairy products, canned food, frozen entrees, household supplies such as toilet paper and aluminum foil. A sign at the end of an aisle lists A& P specials that week (3% discount on Butterine spread). At every register there are signs that read “10¢ or Less,” “Cigarettes,” and “No Checks Cashed.” A sign on the back wall of the A&P prohibits dancing and loitering, and we can infer that A& P wants its customers to have a quick experience, since they are only permitted to eat food purchased at A&P in an eating area off to one side.
A & P is located in a town with plenty to see and do, but getting there would require walking or taking public transportation through fields or past houses that are well within sight of the A& P. It is during this walk that Sammy muses about quitting her job early so she can attend her boyfriend’s band concert. Despite the idyllic setting outside A&P”s doors, inside it feels airless because all three A&P employees are bored with their jobs. The A& P itself is not mentioned as having air conditioning, so the heat generated by the customers and the A&P equipment becomes oppressive enough to drive Sammy to flip her sandwiches into the trash. A & P does have fans, but they fail to dissipate the heat generated inside A&P; instead, “the hot air just circulating around” makes it feel hotter than outside (5).
The A & P has few windows—mainly glass doors through which we view most of its action. Because A& P lacks natural light, many of its lights are left on during daylight hours; this suggests that A & P wants shoppers to be able to see clearly what it sells at any hour, but it also makes A & P feel like a prison. The A&P’s bright lights and lack of windows contribute to its lack of personality as a place where people come together, as do the various notices that inform customers about their behavior. A&P lacks any signs or posters that indicate what sort of community exists outside A& P displays that invite shoppers into A&P’s doors because these decorations would give A & P a personality.
A keen sense of time is essential for understanding “A & P.” Only a quarter-hour passes from the first lines of the story until Lengel confronts Sammy and her friends because they are wearing nothing but swimsuits in A & P’s rather setting. We never learn whether A& P is a 24-hour store, but A & P opens at 7 A.M. and closes at 9 P.M., when the story begins and ends. A sense of earlier times haunts A&P because it lacks anything that suggests a time other than July, 1964, in central Massachusetts.
