English 3011: Honors English 1

Jose I. Mendez

September 7 2016

English 3011: Honors English 1

Prof. Enrique Olivares

Reader Response

On the surface A & P is a story with very little stakes in it, three girls wearing nothing but bikinis enter a supermarket to do an errand for their mom get called out by the manager which leads to a cashier quits in an attempt to try to get some attention from the opposite sex, very anticlimactic for lack of a better word, but behind this mundane event there is a theme of the progressive youth versus the old guard. You can see this message most clearly put at the end, but it is spread throughout the story. This theme not only is very integral to being a youth in the 1960s but can also be easily applied to today’s society as well.

Now to start off we have to establish which character is the rebellious youth, an easy answer, in the case of this story it’s Sammy, and the old guard, another easy one, Lesley. Lesley wants the girls to leave because it goes against the stores policy, and Sammy quits because he doesn’t like the way Lesley embarrassed the girls, so in other words Lesley was angered because the status quo was disrupted, ignored, challenged, etc.… while Sammy quits because of a reaction to this action of the old guard. Now this does raise the question, where the girls trying to send a message intentionally to go against society? It’s a possibility but I find it very unlikely, because in the way they are visibly uncomfortable walking through the store as everyone gazes at them, and how Queenie reacts to Lesley scolding her, if she were in a righteous movement or ideology she wouldn’t feel the need to defend her decency or had left running from the store. What’s more likely is that they forgot their shorts back in the beach or were too lazy to put them on before entering, but at the end it isn’t about their fight against society but Sammy’s and them being unsuspecting victims of this society’s strict policy (a bit overdramatic but you get my point) makes Sammy quitting all the more a sign that his against what he believes to be injustice. That’s why even though the girls are the objects everyone pays the most attention to in the story; it is still 100% Sammy’s story, the girls in the bikini represents the conflicting ideologies of old versus new. Now it doesn’t say whose right or whose wrong, but it doesn’t need to as this dilemma is just setting an example not trying to over idealize one idea versus another. You could say both sides have fault actually, Lesley is just following the rules mindlessly, while in Sammy’s case it would be easy to say that he’s just acting because of emotion and not thinking enough about his actions. The story is not a simple black and white picture of good versus bad; it’s about a boy coming to realization of the world around him.

Now this is all well and good but how does this apply to us in the year 2016, well easily is there still a great rift between what the status quo wants and what generation whatever letter they decide to use want, the answer if you have been paying any attention is yes and it will always be yes, because this is a story as old as time. That’s why Sammy putting so much emphasis on the girl’s body, because he isn’t Obi Wan Kenobi he’s a teenage boy who’s going to be checking out that ass like the rest of us (I say that as a heterosexual teenage boy, if you aren’t interested in that sort of stuff that’s fine but I still feel like you get my point), he never says he’s on some moral high ground, and for good reason because Sammy is just some cashier at an A & P. Were suppose to put ourselves in Sammy’s shoes, now that’s not to say that Lesley is suppose to be some mustache twirling villain in the story lacking complete empathy basically, but he does establish himself as the status quo and that’s what Sammy (us) collide against in the story. So that’s why Sammy seeing how hard life is going to be in the future is the most important part in the story in my opinion, on the surface it’s because he lost his job, but if you look further it’s the realization of the consequences in trying to make a difference in a world that the people on top (in this case a manager of an A & P) so desperately want to remain the same. We can use this to the youth growing up today also without much of a stretch in our imagination. Now if anyone the text probably dislikes or at the very least doesn’t spread a positive light to is the people just shopping, they don’t really go against the status quo due mostly to lack of caring or initiative, but they don’t really tell the girls to cover up, yes they find it strange but they don’t do anything, due mostly to lack of caring or initiative. They are sheep in the words of Sammy they live their lives, eat as much grass as they can, and make sure never to go over the fence.

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