The Protagonist Fights Back: John Updike's A&P

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at the beach (224). Sammy sees how Lengel is treating the girls and he wants to be their unsuspected hero” (225).
As the girls hurry to get out Sammy yells “I quit!”hoping that the girls hear him. (225). Lengel assumes he is joking, so he doesn’t take it very seriously. Once Lengel sees that Sammy is serious, he starts rattling off how he “can’t do this to his mother and father” and how “he doesn’t know what [he’s] saying” (226). Sammy really doesn’t want to do this to his mother and father, but his motto is “once you begin something, it’s almost fatal not to go through with it” (226). Sammy rips of his bowtie and walks out of the door. He finally stands up to the boss and “[his] stomach kind of fell as [he] felt how hard the world was going to be to [him] hereafter” (226). Sammy’s decision is ambivalent; both foolish and brave. On the other hand, most brave things are foolish. It’s ironic because he thinks he is going to spend the rest of his life at A&P, but that is the ...

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