The Hero In John Updike's A & P

In the short story “A&P”, John Updike makes the character Sammy fail in the end unlike a typical hero to show how heroes are irrelevant in society. When Sammy announces that he quits, he hopes the girls are watching and thinks of himself as “their unsuspected hero” (4). In Sammy’s eyes, he is a hero to the girls because he is the one standing up to the dragon and saving the three princesses from his wrath. He is doing the noble thing by quitting his job and fighting the dragon so the princesses can retain their honor. He wants the princesses to watch him do it and acknowledge his heroics. However, when he goes outside to look for the girls, he finds that “they’re gone, of course” (5). Sammy is the girls’ hero but they left without him. The
princesses did not care about Sammy saving them from the dragon and left without thanking him. By adding “of course” to the statement, it shows that Sammy expected that they would leave without him and not care about him yet he still tried to be their hero. Sammy looks back at the store one last time and realizes “how hard the world was going to be to [him]” (5). No one cares that he is a hero even though he lost his job being one. His will most likely be criticized for his heroics since a job is more important than a group of girls. There was no reward to his heroic act and he was punished. Society does not care about heroes like Sammy anymore as people have learned to support themselves and carry on. By making the hero fail in the end, Updike shows how irrelevant heroes are in society.