A&P-John Updike: Life Is Not A Game-Theme
The A&P is a short story by John Updike about a boy named Sammy who works at a grocery story in a coastal town north of Boston. While at work, he encounters a group of girls who are inappropriately dressed and attract attention from customers and employees. The store manager embarrasses the girls by telling them "Girls, this isn't the beach" and Sammy quits his job as a protest to their treatment. The girls, however, never realize what he has done. The passage from the A&P beginning with "Now here comes the sad partÂ…" and ending with "Girls, this isn't the beach" deals with the girls preparing to pay for their purchases and how Lengel reprimands the girls by telling them to cover up before they come into the store again. John Updike's passage conveys the central image of Sammy's idea that life is just a game and how Updike's reiteration of words (like the incessant clanging of a pinball machine) depicts Sammy's perception of life.
Throughout the passage, Updike's character Sammy leaves the readers with the impression that the A&P is like a game to him. He describes his job as a game, with the inside of the store expressed as a pinball machine. The first reference to this theme occurs when Sammy presents the girls' journey through the store like tunnels in a pinball machine instead of grocery store aisles. The image of the light bulb aisle creates the idea of flashing lights in the pinball game. The "Slots Three through Seven" is symbolic of pinball slots which the ball travels through just as the girls pick the aisle they want to go through. Also, as a surprise to Sammy, the money Queenie will use pops out from her bathing suit top, is similar to a pin ball popping out of nowhere and surprising its players.
The game motif that is used in this passage is also reflected not only in the theme of the passage but also in the repetition of the word luck. In Sammy's mind, his job is a game and life is a game with winners and losers. To Sammy, it's...
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