Comprehension Questions: A&P
1. Why does Sammy (the narrator) not notice the girls right away?
2. Put the initial scene in your own words.
3. Why does Sammy mention Salem?
4. What is the time period? What is the location? What do these things have to do with the girls’ transgression?
5. Why do the girls describe the one girl as “striking” and “attractive?”
6. What can you say about Sammy’s voice, and his personality, from his descriptions? Is he a misogynist?
7. How do the other two girls defer to the “queen”?
8. What is the “shining rim?” (page 1; column 2)
9. How does Sammy describe the other customers? What is their reaction to the girls?
10. Can anyone explain “fuselage”?
11. What are Stokesie’s ambitions? What does Sammy think of his chances? A reference to…?
12. What about the location of the A&P makes the girls so surprising? What comment about town residents?
13. What is foreshadowed at the start of the second page, the new paragraph?
14. What is “wax” in the first new paragraph on page 2?
15. How does Lengel ruin everything? What was he just doing? What kind of man is he?
16. How does Sammy imagine the girl’s house? What’s it like? What is the difference with his house?
17. How does Sammy, in his head, make fun of Lengel?
18. Why did “Fancy Herring Snacks flash…” in the girl’s “very blue eyes?” (p. 3)
19. How does Stokesie fill the bags, while the discussion is going on?
20. What fantasy does Sammy live out, in the second and third columns of page three?
21. What do the customers do when they hear that Sammy has quit?
22. Why doesn’t Sammy take it back?
23. What does Sammy mean by a “clean exit?”
Discussion Questions
1. How does the appearance of three girls in bathing suits in the A&P create the initial conflict in this story? What other
conflicts does Sammy’s confrontation with Lengel produce? To what extent does Sammy’s decision to quit provide
a satisfactory resolution to those conflicts?
2. How does Sammy’s characterization of the three girls help describe him? How does his name for the third girl,
Queenie, justify his lengthy description of her? How does Queenie’s purchase reveal the difference between her
world and Sammy’s world?
3. How does the title of the story call attention to its setting? What assumptions does Sammy make about his readers’
familiarity with this setting? How does he compare his store to those nearer the beach?
4. What is the ironic difference between the narrator’s view of himself and the reader’s view of him? How do the
comments of Stokesie and Lengel help qualify Sammy’s first person presentation of the events in the story?
5. What does the story reveal about the causes and effects of “heroic” action? Why has his experience led Sammy to
conclude that the world was going to be hard to him “hereafter”?