After reading “A&P”, answer the following questions. Use complete sentences and specific evidence from the text to support your claims. Make sure you also indicate the page number when you are pulling evidence from the story.
1. Describe Sammy’s speech style. What can we infer about him from the way he speaks and the words that he uses?
2. What is it about the girls, besides their wearing bathing suits, that causes such a stir in the store? What is the reaction of most of the regular customers, and what does that tell us about the nature of his town?
3. For what reasons does Sammy quit? What symbolic meaning might the woman he sees outside the store instead of “his girls” hold for the reader?
4. What might Sammy mean at the end of the story when he says that he realizes “how hard the world [is] going to be to [him] hereafter”? After all, this is just a supermarket job, right?
5. How is this story about economic class, as in societal status? What comments does the story make about differences in class? Consider Sammy’s imagined gathering at “[Queenie’s] living room”: how does Sammy’s depiction of her life differ from what he says about his own?