This short story was very nostalgic for me because I remember having to read this one all the way back in junior high school for an English class, and I remember it being one of the more controversial and mature things I had ever read at that time and overall, I think the story is simple enough that anyone can really analyze it, and I just thought it served as a great gateway into future literary analyses I had to do later on in high school.
John Updike's work can come off as misogynistic to some, and although I haven't really read anything else from Updike other than A & P, I'm willing to give this a pass considering the narrator seems to be a hormonal teenage boy, and seeing three women walk into a grocery store with bikinis is obviously not something that he sees everyday, and for him, it is impossible to avoid. Also, at least he is not Stokesie, who seems to be even more aroused by the girls than Sammy is, and he is married.
However, it is kind of off-putting that Sammy quit his job because of what happened to the girls in the store, especially if his intent was to impress them and have them to himself, which could be the case when he walks out of the store and sees that the girls are nowhere to be found. However, I think an argument can be made that he quit because he didn't like the way that girls were treated by the manager, or perhaps the incident was a whole just triggered another epiphany in Sammy in that he shouldn't be working here altogether. His life seems pretty boring and the girls walking into the store dressed like they were was probably the most unpredictable and exciting thing that has ever happened at that A & P. I just truly don't think Sammy was happy there.
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