A&P

Published in 1961, “A&P” portrays defining dynamics of the period, and the author’s work often engages these dynamics. Updike is known for writing from the perspective of middle-class Americans and often explores the topics of mass consumerism, class division, and coming-of-age. At 19 years old, Sammy is just beginning to understand his place within the world, and “A&P” chronicles his realization. He identifies the people in his own class (at least, the A&P customers) as “sheep” who are lost in consumerism and the status quo. His disillusionment with his own class standing resonates throughout the story.

The story cannot be understood apart from its narrator, whose account is highly dubious. Sammy is a paradigmatic unreliable narrator, and the entire story is filtered through his compromised perception. He routinely spins fanciful narratives to construct a world that is personally meaningful but, on a factual level, mostly hollow. His unchecked imagination focuses almost entirely on others’ lives, which he believes he can automatically intuit by simply looking at them. This sense of unreliability and indeterminacy is compounded by his narration’s shifting between past and present tense. Still, the story’s predominant tone, as well as certain remarks—“Now here comes the sad part of the story” (Paragraph 12)—confirm the plot is casually recounted from some future stance. As his narration stops to explain details of his surroundings (like the layout of his town), these asides imply he consciously addresses an audience unfamiliar with the setting. His congenial rapport with the reader creates a comic mood, despite his intermittent pessimism. There is also no sign that Sammy is duplicitous; he seems to genuinely believe his wild speculation is fact.

Sammy’s unreliability plays into the coming-of-age narrative, and “A&P” addresses several teenage anxieties. While Sammy isn’t fraudulent, he is impulsive, somewhat unsure of himself, and undisciplined in scrutinizing his own knee-jerk assumptions. For example, rather than speaking to Queenie directly, Sammy simply watches her and develops a one-dimensional mental image of her (he does this with all the girls and even the other customers). He is extremely attentive to her physical appearance—but, while he doesn’t truly observe her personality, he is nevertheless highly interested in that personality. The irony is that he invents her personality in his mind, a fact that coheres the story: The entire narrative about Queenie as an upper-class citizen is fabricated. If a reader inspects Sammy’s report, they’ll see no clear, empirical indications of Queenie’s class standing. There are also few signs of the highly particular interior life and personality he ascribes to her. He imagines she rebelliously led the girls into the store; he imagines she enjoys the attention; he imagines she is wealthy; he imagines her blush signals a supercilious, upper-class scorn for the A&P. But none of these assumptions arise from solid fact or sound critical thought. This dynamic finds its ultimate symbolic expression when Queenie (not even her real name but a caricaturizing nickname Sammy assigns her) finally speaks and Sammy is shocked at her voice. The sound is not what he imagined. Likewise, Queenie’s “soul” is nothing like Sammy’s conjecture—but he unhesitatingly returns to his fantasies, this time using her voice as a point of departure.

It is therefore enormously telling—about Sammy, not Queenie—that he paints this image of her and the other girls. Queenie’s life of luxury and ease is, in fact, Sammy’s projection of personal desire. Queenie is only a blank slate whose physical beauty symbolizes and stirs Sammy’s class-related yearning. He longs for a fuller, freer existence, and his deluded fabrication paradoxically leads him to a new reality of himself and his discontent. The story is essentially a comedy: The fundamental movement of Sammy’s character, however conflicted and misguided, is toward hope and creative action. He desires something greater and more meaningful than what he is and has, but he’s still learning to identify and navigate the signposts of the journey.

It is Queenie who (inadvertently) leads Sammy toward self-discovery. Galvanized by the allure of the life he’s projected onto her, he quits his job on the spot, hoping she notices the gesture; her recognition would afford some communion and reality to his fantasy, and it would at least give him vicarious, emotional access to upper-class fulfillment. While she ultimately doesn’t offer this validation, Queenie does spur Sammy to change his life, and, in doing so, she introduces an almost philosophical erotic element to his imagination: Struck by her beauty, he is impelled to pursue a reality above and beyond his current world. The story’s inner dynamism is a comic interplay of banality and transcendence, as a swimsuit-clad teenager naively ambles into a small-town convenience store and unwittingly transforms the clerk’s life through convoluted inspiration. The element of absurdity further defines the story’s comic genre. Given a logical audit, Sammy’s unconscious premise—that upper-class ease and finery would redeem him from lifeless consumerism—is doubtful. Still, the upper class symbolizes an exuberance and agency that could transfigure his life.

As a coming-of-age story, “A&P” portrays Sammy’s movement through a juvenile confusion over self and self-expression. He wishes to abandon conformity but does not know how to exist outside of it. There is lightheartedness to Sammy’s narration, but it is tinged with a foreboding sense of failure. The story is broken up into segments based upon their emotional intensity (with which there is also some correlation to narrative tense shifting). For example, as Sammy recounts losing his job, he says, “Now here comes the sad part of the story, at least my family says it’s sad but I don’t think it’s sad myself” (Paragraph 12). Later, when Lengel walks toward the check-out slot, Sammy remarks, “Then everybody’s luck begins to run out” (Paragraph 12).

Sammy’s vision of the A&P is a microcosm of early-1960s America. The store seems like a meaningless, consumerist place that is somehow inhuman—with Sammy providing the era’s nascent revolutionary spirit. Sammy frequently refers to the customers as animals, indicating his disdain for them. He imagines they mindlessly gather food and all behave mechanically—but this is still Sammy’s unjustified assumption of other characters’ inner lives. For example, during the altercation with Lengel, Sammy notices “the customers showing up with their carts but, you know, sheep, seeing a scene [...] not wanting to miss a word” (Paragraph 20). After Sammy quits, he again notices, “A couple customers that had been heading for my slot begin to knock against each other, like scared pigs in a chute” (Paragraph 30). His evaluation of the customers’ personalities and motivations is pure conjecture, yet he relays it with unreflective confidence, creating a tacit irony. Like with his image of Queenie, however, his perception of the customers reveals his inner conflict. To Sammy, the customers symbolize a dreaded conformity and consumerism.

The intricate descriptions of the girls’ swimsuits and the food brands reflect the quality of Sammy’s mind. Though he’s prone to diversion and invention, he is sharply observational, which plays into his wit. However, the material detail—especially of the store products, brand names, and prices—also suggests Sammy’s inundation with materialism and consumerism. Lengel, too, symbolizes one of Sammy’s unconscious gripes with the era: the older generation’s worldview. When Lengel admonishes the girls for their liberal appearance, Sammy wishes to impress them for the same reason. This variance between the two characters’ perspectives symbolizes the disconnect between the ideals of the younger and older generations. This cultural drama, too, is at the fore of the decade. When Sammy quits, he chooses to live differently than those who came before him.