Indecent Pride

As the story "A&P" progresses, readers find themselves focusing on many different aspects of the scene. The primary aspect that is seen is of the girls in the supermarket, but as we read, our attentions is not on the girls, through they are the main focus, but rather on those surrounding the girls. The theme of monotonous settings and ordinary people--the "sheep" described by John Updike--rule our perspective and divert us from thinking thoroughly about the girls and their place in society. As a reader, I feel that more attention needs to be drawn to the girls themselves and their perspective on the situation in the supermarket.

The setting is the same for all of the characters in the story, but the plot seems to surround the girls in the mind of the narrator. Therefore, we must look at the incentive that the girls must have in entering the supermarket so promiscuously. Sammy comments that “Queenie” seems to be showing the girls how to flaunt themselves and to make themselves the centers of attention. In this way, Queenie is successful; the entire supermarket notices and brings attention to their presence. The prospect of being observed does not go unnoticed by Sammy, who understands that the supermarket is nearly five miles from the beach, and the girls, therefore, had plenty of time to properly dress themselves before entering the store. Also, the reader observes, at the end of the story that they circled the entire supermarket in order to find one item, herring snacks. While they could have been in the supermarket for only moments and made a brief appearance in the store, the girls chose to make a display of themselves and wander through the majority of the aisles in order to retrieve their purchase. The girls seem to enjoy being gawked at and act as though everyone staring at their almost-bare bodies is commonplace for girls such as these.

While this scene, to the modern reader, would seem almost common and uninteresting if the same situation had happened today, the outright disregard for proper dress is a very exciting prospect in this story. This may be because the story was set in the 1950’s and the girls in this time were supposed to be much more proper than these girls seemed to act. There is almost a blend of modernism that is mixed into the monotonous supermarket scene. The girls are not only wearing very little clothing in a public place, but they are wearing 2-piece bathing suits—which are seemingly offensive to Mr. Lengel and force him to confront the customers about their behavior. In this scene, we face the fine line between the modern ideas of the customer’s always being right, and of decency in public places. As a reader, I feel that Mr. Lengel had a right to ask his customers to practice common decency because he knows as well as Sammy does that between the super market and the beach, the girls had plenty of time to put on clothes and make themselves more publicly presentable. He seems to notice that rather than simply shopping as the rest of the sheep do, that the girls are purposefully flaunting their bodies and making themselves the “dynamite” in the store. Because of this obvious tension that the girls create among the employees and the customers, Mr. Lengel has a right to keep his store pure and respectable and to ask the girls to remain decent while in his supermarket.

The scene that the girls create in the supermarket is intriguing through the eyes of Sammy, and the attention of all involved are on this girls, but readers seem to focus more on the people surrounding the girls. Readers are more intrigued by the way that the “sheep” react to Queenie’s whit shoulders and the girls’ bare skin. While the story itself surrounds the girls, the commonality of the store and the setting create more intrigue for the reader than does the blunt indecency of the girls in the supermarket. This is an interesting prospect to see that the intrigue of the reader is different that that of the characters in the story. As readers, we are experiencing the way that Sammy feels toward the freedom the girls have to express them selves and the mundane feeling of the supermarket as a whole. The characters though, have a plot shaped by the unexpected appearance of the indecent girls. John Updike does a good job of creating a scene with almost different plots for the characters than for the reader (762).