Updike Clean Exit

In the short story “A&P” by John Updike, portrays the main character -Sammy- as an antihero, rather than a traditional hero. Sammy wanted the girls to acknowledge him. He decides to quit “hoping they’ll stop and watch [him]” like in movies where the main protagonist always gets his love interest. He was expecting that they would notice him, but in the end, they didn’t even glance his way and scurried off as quickly as they could. Sammy left with “a clean exit” and he went looking for his “girls, but they’re gone of course.” Instead of getting a reward he wanted instead what he got was realism. Sammy has been building up the moment from an “unsuspected hero” to “a clean exit”, but he’s still just an antihero. Ironically his clean exit left