A&P

“A&P”

• Genre: Short fiction; realistic fiction
• Originally Published: 1961
• Reading Level/Interest: Adult; grades 9-12
• Structure/Length: Approx. 6 pages
• Protagonist and Central Conflict: Sammy, the teen narrator, is working at a grocery store in town during the summer when a group of girls wearing only bathing suits enters the store and brings their goods to the checkout counter; Sammy is awed by their boldness and beauty, ascribing not only a socioeconomic level—higher than his own middle-class status among the other consumerist “sheep” shoppers—but also a specific personality to the one he names “Queenie” in his mind; when the manager emerges and embarrasses the girls by banishing them from the store based on their attire, Sammy makes a rebellious statement by quitting his needed job on the spot, but quickly realizes that he has set a course for his future based on desire and conjecture
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Content includes female body objectification and misogynism.

John Updike, Author

• Bio: 1932-2009; born in Pennsylvania; his father taught math and his mother was a fiction writer; obtained a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1954, spending most of his life in Massachusetts thereafter; began writing short stories, essays, poetry, and criticism for The New Yorker magazine in 1955 and published over 50 books in his lifetime, including his famous Rabbit Angstrom novel series; winner of the National Book Award, American Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and National Arts Club Medal of Honor; awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for Rabbit Is Rich and another in 1990 for Rabbit At Rest
• Other Works: The Carpenter Hen and Other Tame Creatures (poems) (1958); “The Happiest I’ve Been” (1958); The Centaur (1963); The Witches of Eastwick (1984); Just Looking (essays) (1989); Gertrude and Claudius (2000)

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:

• Conformity and Individualism
• Growing Up, Attraction, and Self-Expression
• Discontent With Class Status

STUDY OBJECTIVES: In accomplishing the components of this Unit, students will:

• Develop an understanding of the ways a coming-of-age character’s resolute perception of the individual as distinct from community leads to deterministic action.
• Analyze the role of consumerism as reflected in textual elements such as detail, character development, and atmosphere to gain an understanding of social discontent with class status.
• Gain an understanding of the effect of an unreliable narrator on the reader’s perception of reality.