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A&P

Essay #2-F: "Sammy is a sexist pig who suddenly sees the light"
In John Updike's short story, "A & P," the main character, Sammy, is a cashier at a small
grocery store. He is seen by many to be a sexist pig, describing in detail how he sees
the three girls that walk in to the store. Sammy is in fact a sexist pig by what he says
about them. With evidence and quotes from the story, Sammy can be determined to be a
sexist pig.
He describes the first girl he sees walking in the store as "a chunky kid, with a good
tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under
it…" (421). Although the comment was kept to himself, in mind it is a sexist
comment. Though the girl was in a bathing suit and there was no beach around, she
probably wasn't trying to get the attention of young guys. She was just there to "pick up
a jar of herring snacks" (423). Describing the girl's "can" (421), meaning her backside,
gives Sammy some credit of being a sexist pig.
Sammy slowly begins to see the other two girls follow the first. He notices not only what
they're wearing, but what the little clothing that they have on covers up. "This clean
bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of
metal tilted in the light" (421). With this quote, he is describing how the bathing suit
was slipping off the girl, but in a more demeaning manner. "With the straps pushed off,
there was nothing between the top of the suit and top of her head except just her…"
(421). Sammy describes that he just sees the girl, a one-nighter type. He doesn't see
that she's a human, but just a plaything.
One other quote/thought that Sammy has while these girls (whom remain nameless throughout
the story), is when the one he calls Queeny takes her money from "the hollow at the
center of her nubbled pink top" (423). He begins to get excited as he uncreases the bill
as "it just having come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla [he] had ever
known there were" (424). Sammy seems to be more of a sexist pig, as the reader proceeds
through the story.
In conclusion, Sammy is a sexist pig. His thoughts of the girls are distasteful and
degrading towards them. The idea of his precession of calling the girls by what they look
like makes him a pig. But how he describes them, in the manner that he does, makes him
sexist. Towards the end, when he looks for "[his] girls" (425), he notices they are not
there. Maybe he realized that since he didn't know them that they weren't going to hang
around for him, or maybe he realized that no girl would want to hang out with a sexist
pig.