Reading Updikes story, I felt like I was waiting too long for something to happen.

Having finished it, I realize it intends to make something meaningful out of something trivial (a technique which I feel like I really appreciate sometimes), but I feel like the end product just stays too trivial. Maybe Updikes tone is too casual to give Sammys infatuation much weight. Descriptions of Queenie were just not very poetical at all: he compares her bare, pale skin to a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light and to the smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known. When I read these descriptions, I dont see Sammy being overcome with love; Im distracted by how funny the comparisons are and how off the language is for the mood. Without giving a real sense of infatuation, this story loses a much-needed force. I did feel like Updike set up a very powerful scene in the last paragraph. Sammy quits and triumphantly walks out of the A & P having defended the girls dignity. Instead of rejoicing somehow in this victory, he only to finds himself alone outside, looking back at Lengel through a window and feeling like he had made an irreparable mistake. Updike makes Sammy especially alone: he loses his place under Lengel for the failed chance to win a place with the girls. This is all captured very powerfully in the single shot of Sammy, alone, looking back.