men will always be men Essay

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“Men will always be men”

There are men out there that will get out of their way just to impress a girl. Sometimes men will go to extremes and risk losing their jobs just like the narrator of the story Sammy. In the short story “A&P” by John Updike. Sammy, who the narrator of the story, also who is a cashier at a supermarket called “A&P”, shows an excellent example of a man trying to impress a woman. His quick decision of to quit his job was a bad decision and will most likely have a big effect on him. At the beginning of the story the opening line of the story: "In walks three girls in nothing but bathing suits" (Updike 234). The narrator, Sammy throughout the sstory expresses his thoughts of the customers that go in the store. Most of Sammy’s thoughts relay about three girls that walk into the store. Sammy immediately gets very sexually descriptive in a nineteen-year-old boyish way, "and a sweet broad looking can rear with those two crescents of white under it, where the sun never seems to hit" (Updike 234). Sammy apparently looks at the three girls that walked into the A&P only as sexual objects or also a boyish desire. It is easy to take misinterpret the story for a story of a boy who would do anything for example like to quit his job to "impress" just a girl.
Afterwards he complains about a regular, an old woman, a fifty-year-old "witch" as he calls her that has no eyebrows, who is patiently waiting to get checked out by Sammy. She immediately gets annoyed with Sammy because he busy drooling over the young thing which has just walked in the door (Updike 235). The first girl who walks into the A&P catches Sammy’s eye almost instantly which he describes her as a chunky girl with a two-piece plaid bathing suit on that showed off her "sweet broad soft-looking can" (Updike 235). As if staring at this girl’s backside wasn’t enough, Sammy also noticed "those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit" (Updike 235). Wonder how this girl would feel if she knew how intensely Sammy was scoping her out? That behavior, no matter what she was wearing, is totally unacceptable especially in a grocery store. Is Sammy at fault for not having any self-control? In his world it might be acceptable for a hormonal nineteen-year-old guy to check out a girl in her bathing suit.
For Sammy obviously, perfection wasn’t something he looked for in anyone, except maybe for the girl he referred to as "Queenie," who Sammy thinks she, "has the nicest two scoops of vanilla breasts" he has ever seen (Updike 236). If this girl was so perfect, why did he wonder if she had a brain or if it was just "a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar" (Updike 236)? Indeed, men will be men. this not just another sign that maybe Sammy is not very interested in the way a female thinks or feels, but only in how she looks? Yet he was in all his willing power to get out of his way to talk to that girl. Sammy believed that the only thing that goes through a girl’s mind a mother’s lesson on "how to do it, walk slow and hold yourself straight" (Updike 236). It seems as though Sammy has the "bee in a glass jar" kind of mind himself. As Sammy watched the girl "buzz" over to her two friends, it made his stomach rub the inside of his apron (Updike 237). Sammy also observed the women in the store turn away when they noticed the girls. At this point, Sammy views the rest of the women in the
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