John Updike's "A&P"

Updike wrote "A&P" in the early sixties. A time when the hippie movement was gaining in popularity and the youth rebelled against "The Establishment". That is what the three girls in the bathing suits represent; they symbolize that rebellion. They break the norm in the conservative Mid-Western town by wearing bathing suits to the supermarket and "The Establishment" is quick to react in the form of a reprise by the store manager. The protagonist, our "checkout hero" joins "the cause" and quits his job, thus rejecting the values of his parents and 1950's American society. This is "The Revolution", Milwaukee style, and like everything they do in Milwaukee - it's rather boring and quite subdued.