In John Updikes' short story entitled A&P in the textbook Making Literature Matter: An Anthology For Readers, the setting is a grocery store. A grocery store is a complex where people come to shop. This particular grocery store seems to have a level of conformity that the protagonist, a cashier named Sammy, sees in every shopper as well as in the environment that serves as the backdrop to the store. From the bank, to the church, to the homeless people who clutter the street, to the varicose veins and the unsightly "house slaves" who enter the corridors. (Update 616-17) The people in this story all fall into what Sammy, our narrator and protagonist, calls sheep. He compares them to cattle who live their lives in conformity and submission. I found out that these people are evil characters that contribute to Sammy's decision to quit at the end of the story. Sammy refers to an old lady as a chest keeper saying "...if she had been born at the right time they would have burned her in Salem." (Updike 615) The three attractive, scandalously dressed women who enter the store seem to disrupt the conformity of the grocery store, shoppers, and employees. Male employees keep an eye on the girls, and consumers are shocked and amazed by the girls' boldness. They also have to take a second look to make sure what they see is real. Sammy looks like he's doing some shopping of his own as he almost drools over the girls as they strut through the store like royalty. Any conformity that Sammy may have fallen into from being an employee is slowly drained away as the girls walk up and down the aisles against the apparent natural flow of decent and non-aesthetically pleasing customers, paying no attention to the staff.... . . half of the card ......d when it leaves the store. There's no going back now, what's done is done. After further research I found an interview with John Updike, the author, in which he states that there is more to the story. However the editor, Bill Maxwell, removed a couple of pages where he actually goes to the beach to try to find the girls, but with no luck. The author said he actually prefers this shortened version as the outcome still reflects the irony of the ending with how hard Sammy believes his life will be. (John Updike)Works Cited"John Updike: "A&P"" Movies on demand. Np, nd Web. May 22, 2014. .Updike, John, John Schilb, John Clifford, and Joyce Hollingsworth. “11 Love.A&P.”Teaching Resources Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Fifth edition ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2000. 614-19. Press.