Character Development In John Updike's A & P

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Sammy’s character development is rapid in this essay. At first, he is shown to be an arrogant, sexist, childish character, but by the end he has made small steps toward change. A&P exposes supermarket society through the eyes of a 19 year old cashier, showing things like the typical personalities of customers and how they are organized in the mind of Sammy. It also had underlying themes such as dignity of work and empathy. The story opens with a sexually charged description of a few young ladies who enter A&M, the supermarket of which the main character, Sammy immediately describes them with extreme attention to detail, “There was this chunky one, with the two piece-- it was bright green and the seams of the bra were still sharp and her belly…show more content…
She’d been watching cash registers for forty years and probably never seen a mistake before.”. Notice how he describes this women as, “a cash register watcher” showing that he’s dealt with these kinds of people before. It also says something about his empathy, assuming that this women is, “a witch” when he’s only just met her. He may look at people as things partly because he has been working the same job for so long, that all the people seem to be acting in patterns to him. This does not make him a reliable narrator due to the bias he has developed over time. When Sammy describes Stokeskie, his fellow employee, Sammy’s arrogance is revealed. “He thinks he’s going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when it’s called the Great Alexandrov and Petrooshki Tea Company or something like that.” This shows that Sammy thinks that his fellow employee will never be manager of the store, via his sarcasm. This shows that Sammy sees no future in being a cashier at this store, as he sees no career path for anyone
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