In the story “A & P” by John Updike, I think a good theme would be, making decisions at an age by others actions. In the story we have several teens that are in a transitional stage. Making decisions for them (teens) are truly different depending on your environment. You have the three girls who walk into the grocery store and the young man who is nineteen years old, who is kind of a weird guy. He has his moment of thinking things are to normal and he wants to be different. The girls came in and they were different, they were something he wanted to be like or he wanted to impress. All through the story told by Sammy (the narrator), he wanted to change who he was. He saw these teen girls as impressionable and as the girls were put out down, he felt like he had to be their savior. The decision he ultimately made that changed his future, was because of these teen girls. He…show more content… In this story there is a couple that were try taking with each other but only saying what the other wants to hear. I didn’t really understand the story on the first read or even the second, but once we talked about the story in class I understood the meaning more. In the couples conversation it was mention many times about doing something, but the couple never said it outright. I wasn’t aware of what that something was until the end of the story. Trying to make the other person happy in a relationship and doing something that you yourself are not sure of, makes communicating difficult. Also in the story she says “Can we maybe stop talking”. (Pg. 199 Para. 85) The man however kept the conversation going until the woman came to the point where she said “I’ll scream”. (Pg. 199 Para.100) Neither one of them wanted to admit what was really going on in their lives or wanted to express their true feelings to each other. They wanted to make each other happy, but not