Character Analysis Essay for A&P With the opening line, "On the way these girls with nothing on but bathing suits" (Updike 456), the audience's direction is immediately changed by John Updike's skillful manipulation. Immediately the reader's mind begins to shape the contours of what might happen as the story unfolds. The opening words may be numbered as few; however, their content contains enough graphic images to initiate a developing mental image. Sammy's opening line constitutes a monologue of his young male's vivid, imaginative, light-hearted and casual observation of the world. Furthermore, his youth manifests itself in immature actions and reactions. His observations, such as “…two crescents of white right below, where the sun never seems to hit…” (Updike 456) about the girl in the green plaid two-piece and his statement regarding the lady at the checkout “She is one of those cash register attendants, a witch in her fifties…” (Updike 456) also shows a certain lack of immature civility Sammy offers in the “A&P” paragraphs a remarkable amount of observational psychology from a character who otherwise demonstrated a somewhat superficial mentality. Note the distance from Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned" Get an original essay from the beach to the store, how many people in the city do not have been at the beach for twenty years and how many of them wear a t-shirt when they come to shop The reader's interest is piqued by each of Sammy's interpretations regarding the ebb and flow of the market and continues throughout the progression of the story as the. His eyes follow the three young women in bikinis. The perfunctory elucidations continue with descriptions of Sammy, noting “…if she had been born at the right time they would have burned her in Salem” (Updike 456). It was as if her daydreams were tabloid fodder pinned on newspapers. shelves to be sold. Such vivid metaphors in a transitory state would be one thing, but as he works through the story, he also continues to elaborate on his fantasies. Sammy's initial conclusions include the physique of the story's three muses, their style and their attitude as they parade through the store, “…as if he didn’t walk barefoot much…feeling the floor with every step, putting a little extra care, extra action into it” (Updike 456). In exploring her thoughts on how girls' minds work and, more importantly, how these girls' minds work in particular, Sammy displays what is typically regarded, especially now, as the chauvinistic point of view of the 1990s. 60. In his mind games, he portrays himself as their superior because he is male and also because he has the authoritative role of caring for them. As a result, he exhibits the characteristics of a shepherd, mentally guiding their path. Obviously these behaviors were learned from the formation of society and the role model determined by the actions and conversations between his peers and his parents. As the transition of "A&P" continues, Sammy notices of the bikini-clad young woman "... this clean, bare plane of the top of her chest down from her shoulder bones... I mean it was more than cute" (Updike 457). Sammy's concern that Queenie, the leader of the troupe, had hidden the dollar bill, "...from the two softest vanilla balls" (Updike 459) is also quite indicative of his observations about women. This interpretation can only lead the reader to the conclusion that Sammy sees women more as a trophy thanas individuals. Sammy demonstrates his expansive imagination as his mind's eye creatively evaluates every movement that occurs in the store. Extractions from the fertile descriptions of his mind deliver the reader a menagerie of stereotypes such as "(do you really think there's a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?)". He also furthers his calculations about the nature of shoppers with superficial puns like “Sheep pushing their carts…”, “Some house slaves in curlers…” and “…knocking against each other like frightened pigs in a chute (Updike 456, 457 and 460). While glowering at the girls parading up and down the aisles, Sammy realizes that the "queen" of the troupe realizes that he and Stokesie are watching their shopping adventure. Interestingly, one sentence has the word "flesh" inserted, which is offensive slang for women similar to the way Sammy and Stokesie stared at the three young women. Somewhere in the back of his mind as he observes that he is five miles from the beach, Sammy knows that he is far from the glare of sunlight on a beach and in a spot where his gaze is probably unwelcome and quite noticeable. Sammy's dialogue with his colleague shows Stokie as a married man who approaches the level of adult responsibility and yet whose actions still tap into the immaturity of youth. Sammy's statement comparing the varicose veins of women with six children to a road map contains some humor as well as some judgment that includes basic insensitivity. In effect he is comparing the figures of married women with children to young women with much of their bodies exposed. His thoughtless use of the chauvinistic metaphor “meat” returns when the girls stop at the meat counter and his observation is: “…old McMahon pats himself on the mouth and takes care of them by evaluating their joints. Poor boys, I was starting to feel sorry for them, there was nothing they could do about it” (Updike 458). Sammy really evaluates the opposite sex as not equal and also regards them very differently from how he perceives males. He's almost saying that it's the fault of the three girls in bikinis that the men in this story are ogling them, even though they are dressed rather scantily for the place and time period. Somehow, Sammy fails to appreciate the fact that he is the one who is off duty. Out of what appears to be boredom, Sammy then launches from his fertile conjectures of imagination the claim that the store is like a pinball machine. “The whole store is like a pinball machine and I didn't know which tunnel they came out of” (Updike 458), draws from our primary muse's whimsical supposition that all shoppers are embarking on some sort of journey in which they don't have the total check. However, along with the false eloquence of Sammy's surveillance comment comes descriptions of various items on the shelves that he finds not entirely useful. Watching the three bikini-clad girls come into view, our protagonist once again feels that it is his good fortune and Stokie's bad luck that "...an old party in baggy pants stumbles..." (Updike 458) . The only other available cash register with a cashier is Sammy's, "so the girls [go] to [him]" (Updike 458). Now it's the cashier at cash register number one who has illusions as he wonders where the money will come from; then a dollar bill comes out of Queenie's bikini top. Suddenly what Sammy thought of as luck changes, just like the sand in an hourglass runs out. Director Lengel makes his first appearance as he returns from the parking lot after haggling over the price of cabbages. Lengel appears in the.