A & P

Advanced English 9
ASSIGNMENT
What did you learn about Sammy? (Use your characterization chart and
annotations)
What happened to him?
What did you notice about him? (the fact that he wore a bow tie or an ironed shirt
pressed by his mom, an apron with his name stitched on) What does this say
about cashiers during this time period?
What else did you notice about him? (Looks, job, personality, etc.)
HOMEWORK
Imagine that, instead of Sammy, you are the cashier for Aisle 3 in the A&P of a
small town when the three girls walk in wearing bathing suits. What do you think?
How do you react? Be sure to write your version with a lot of detail, so the reader
gets a picture of the kind of person you are.
Want to switch it up??? Your story can be told in a large store (instead of small), in
the present (or a past time period)its up to you!
PROMPT
Write about what you can tell about a person just by looking at
them. What can you tell by talking to them, or hearing them
talk to someone?
Respond in your Bell Work section.
CHARACTERIZATION
Three elements of characterization: physical appearance,
behavior, actions (including interactions with other characters).
CHARACTERIZATION CHART
Create this chart in your Literature section:

Sammy Lengel Stokesie Queenie
ANNOTATIONS
In addition to the key annotations you should look for (literary
techniques, questions, difficult words, etc.), I would like you to
look for personality traits, characteristics, and physical
appearance.
BELL WORK:
What does the fact that Sammy quits his job, with no notice,
over what may or may not be an important event tell us about
Sammy as a person?
Response must be at least a paragraph.
CHARACTER ANALYSIS
How much did you learn about Sammy?
What happened to him?
Did you notice that he wore a bow tie, ironed shirt (even though
his mother pressed it for him), and an apron with his name
stitched on it? Why might this be important?
Tell me everything you know about Sammy (looks, job,
personality, etc.) without using the same words as the author.
WRITING FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE
Imagine that, instead of Sammy, it is you on Aisle 3 of the A & P
in this small town when the three girls walk in wearing bathing
suits. What do you think? How do you react? Be sure to write
your version with enough detail that the reader gets a picture of
what kind of person you are.

Feeling creativeyou can change the small store to a large one,
change it from the past (time period) to the present, etc.
DESCRIPTIVE WRITING
Think of something that has happened to you anything, large
or small, recent or in the past, and write it down.

Create an outline of the events as they occurred.
DESCRIPTIVE WRITING
Refer to your outline and add details that create texture and
character.

Think about the descriptive language used in A & P and the
way small things were used to explain character.
DESCRIPTIVE WRITING - INTRODUCTION
Include attention-getters
Example: When I was eight an the world was still as bright and shiny as
the brand-new quarter Uncle Fred used to pull from behind my ear my
mother and father and I took our first road trip to Grandmas house in
Illinois. Of course, I had seen trees and cows and fields, but I had never
seen so many trees and cows and fields thousands, millions. They
wouldnt let up. I was getting so sick of the sight of all that nature that I
took to staring at the asphalt with its neatly drawn white or yellow lines,
but asphalt can make a person a little tetched in the head, woozy, dizzy. It
can mesmerize if one isnt careful. Oh, but when we pulled up to
Grandmas, I knew excitement real, honest-to-goodness excitement for
the first time. The house itself, the sloped not Texas-flat backyard
visible even from the driveway, and at second glance, some foreign object
had landed on the roof it all almost screamed fun.
DESCRIPTIVE WRITING BODY 1
The house turned out to be a splendid thing indeed and promised to occupy me
for days, weeks, maybe even suck me in entirely so that I would never have to
leave. Perched smack-dab in the middle of the living room was a staircase. This
was not just any straight, put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other staircase, but a
winding one that seemed to curve all the way to the heavens. Its steps, naturally,
were not uniform, some places giant-wide, others teensy-tiny built just for fairies
who tiptoe, whose fairy feet as everyone knows barely touch the earth. The
grandest part of it all was the railing, which slithered like a serpent, twisting and
turning, curling its way out of sight. It was just waiting for a little boy like me to
hop on the polished wood, sideways, not daring to straddle its wildness, and
careen down three flights, letting out war whoops along the way. Yes, I had found
a new friend! A final mystery was the balconies, little bits of sky where precious
memories could be made, souvenirs for my mind. I played with the assortment of
fathers ancient toys, read the books he read, and at night I would try to count
every single star, lose track of my numbers, and have to start all over again. The
house was truly like no other.
DESCRIPTIVE WRITING BODY 2
When I needed some fresh Illinois air, I hit the backyard on rocket feet. In a jiffy, I
was calling to the neighborhood boys to join me, and they heard through open
summer windows and seemed to drift over from every house in town. We busied
ourselves setting up the makeshift bases on Grandmas rolling backyard. That was
the exciting part. Anyone can play a game of baseball, but hillside baseball is
another sport entirely. Once we learned to lean into our sloped positions, running
from base to base posed another new problem for Americas favorite pastime.
The unpredictable terrain made turtles out of hares and grew new boy-muscles
that ached long into the night. Of course, pitching and actually hitting the ball
were as difficult as digging ones way to China. A pitch was no longer fast and
furious but more like watching a butterfly take flight, wondering where or even if
it would land. Its trajectory would usually be Grandmas clothesline or the rolling
expanse of grass that separated the pitcher from the batter or up, up, up in the
sky only to land back at the pitchers feet. There must have been some law of
physics that explained uneven surfaces and the path of baseballs on such planes,
and yet the utter excitement that came from discovery, from something different,
something new, made it all the more fun.
DESCRIPTIVE WRITING BODY 3
The best part of anything is always saved for last Grandmas case, the cupola. As
it turned out, this mysterious place was a square little box of a thing with its waist-
high sides and pointy roof not the landing site of a spaceship after all. Who
would have thought that this innocent-looking space could become a fort, my
pretend soldiers and I aiming our pretend rifles at pretend Indians that lurked in
the real bushes in Grandmas front yard? I even realized that this strange
structure could pose as a tent of sorts. At night Id arm myself with leftovers from
dinner, Coke poured carefully into my daddys old canteen, a blanket, pillows, and
a flashlight in case any Injuns decided to attack while I least expected it. It was
fine sleeping the sky ablaze with stars and moon and the cool air tingling my
skin, almost tickling me to sleep. Those nights, though when sleep had not yet
settled in or in the early morning hours, I became a spy for our neighbors heck,
the whole neighborhood as far as I could see. Protecting them was my mission. I
had to make sure that no enemies infiltrated our midst, that everything was as it
should be, safe in this Illinois town.
DESCRIPTIVE WRITING - CONCLUSION
Just being an eight-year-old boy can be a thing of wonder itself, and I had many
chances to live out many dreams in my own home with my own friends in my own
neighborhood. That one magical summer, though, I was given the best present of
all possibilities. In Grandmas house I was a discoverer, no less important than
Christopher Columbus happening on a new world. In the backyard I was able to
defy laws of nature or gravity or something I didnt quite understand. In that
cupola oh, I will always remember I was not a boy but a man in charge of a
whole communitys welfare. Grandmas house was more than exciting. It was
something that changed me, that made me look at things differently, with a more
creative eye, an Illinois attitude, Daddy would say and smile a knowing, secret
smile telling me that he, too, had seen it all those years ago.