AP1The short story "A&P", a nineteen year old boy who works at a small grocery store on the East Coast called A&P. He works in the store as a cashier until until a hot summer day sees three girls clad only in their swimsuits enter the store to buy herring snacks and sour cream for the mother of one of the girls. Everything was going well until the store owner came in and scolded the girls for entering the store in inappropriate attire. In a useless heroic gesture to try to convince the girls; Sammy quits his job to protest the treatment of girls. This “selfless” act was in vain, because when he left the store hoping the girls would wait for him, they were gone. Updike painted a perfect picture of what lies in the inner mind of a young man: SEX. He does this through detailed descriptions of each of the three girls and a “heroic” act to save the day. Updike's use of describing the smallest details of the three girls allows the reader to know where Sam's mind is; right in the gutter. In the first paragraph, Sam's thoughts about the first girl he sees, or as he calls her, "Plaid", are nothing more than analyzing every curve of her body. As Plaid enters the store, Sammy begins to have a mental description, oddly enough, of his butt, "with a nice tan and a nice soft-looking board with these two crescents of white just below, where the sun never seems.” hit, at the top of the back of his legs” (480). Updike embraces this rule very well as a nineteen-year-old sex-oriented character. Sammy seems to appreciate another quality: "They didn't even have shoes" (480). This seemed strange to me, at least by today's standards. Seeing girls without shoes is a daily occurrence. The girl Sammy admires the most is "Queenie", the leader of the three girls. Being the leader of the three girls and the most flamboyant is perhaps what attracted Sammy to her; “What attracted me was that the straps were down…from her shoulders and wrapped loosely around the cool tops of her arms” (481). Sam's only desire was simply sex and it blinded his judgment..