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Do you remember when you realized that the whole world did not eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and jump off the swing into the sandbox? There is a point in every child’s life where the spell of youth is broken and the harsh, devil-may-care views of mature existence are revealed. In the short story “A & P” a boy goes through a coming-of-age of sort, and sees society as it exists from an adult …

…looks back through the windows of grocery land and his stomach falls as he “felt how hard the world was going to be to (him) thereafter.” (Updike, 31) Aisles and price checks do not exist in the real world. Quitting his job at the A & P was Sammy’s step up from adolescence, his small triumph over his youthful being. Sammy has his first true epiphany, and it just happens to occur at the A & P.