54 pages • 1 hour read
John UpdikeA&P
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1961A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
Sammy
The unreliable narrator and protagonist is 19-year-old Sammy, an A&P clerk in a small New England town. He works the check-out slots and is very familiar with the regulars. The reader never learns how long Sammy has worked at the store. With keen observation, he intricately describes everyone—from the customers to the girls to his boss. His eye is almost entirely fixated on physical appearance, and he draws (often very objectifying) conclusions about people accordingly. Sammy is friendly with his coworker Stokesie, but he suggests that Stokesie has less freedom; Sammy is still free to shape his life as he wishes, unlike Stokesie, who must care for his wife and two children. The larger irony is that, by the end of the story, Sammy has indeed shaped his own life, and perhaps poorly (though not irredeemably).
As the story unfolds, Sammy grows increasingly self-conscious of his class standing. The tension is driven partly by his attraction to Queenie, which is both physical and emotional. He fantasizes about parties held at her home, envisioning the sort of life that he may only dream of. This increases his frustration not toward Queenie but toward Lengel, as Sammy is seemingly angry with those in his own class who, he assumes, are content with a stagnant, monotonous life. By the end of the story, Sammy learns that rebellion likely won’t raise him to a higher class, that his future will be full of Lengels who are hardened by the reality of work, and that rash actions are usually unwise. The ending scene leaves Sammy hungering after a new life, but while the story appears largely open-ended and even ominous, his earlier narration hints that his trajectory is firmly hopeful. Before he narrates the event of getting fired, he tells the reader, “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). This backward glance clarifies that Sammy relays the event from a future point—a point far enough in the future that both he and his family have an opinion on the debacle, and his opinion involves no sadness.
Queenie
Because the world of “A&P” is rendered wholly through the report of an unreliable narrator, all characters remain, to some degree, indeterminate: The reader can never be sure of the accuracy of Sammy’s evaluations, which are at times almost theatrical in their hyperbole and unjustified assumption. Queenie’s ambiguity is therefore perfectly correlated to the dubiousness of Sammy’s narration. While concrete details—such as the paleness of her skin, the position of her swimsuit straps, the words she speaks—may be taken for granted, Sammy’s interpretation of such details deserves scrutiny.
What the reader can know, however, is what Queenie represents to Sammy, which is the allure of the upper class—which ultimately symbolizes a fuller, renewed life for him. The allure is so potent that he quits his job trying to gain emotional access to it. Even Queenie’s appearance and comportment, as Sammy relays it, embody two archetypal qualities of the upper class: beauty and power (hence her royal sobriquet). For example, Sammy is at once struck by how Queenie is “more than pretty” (Paragraph 3), and based on her confident air, he fantasizes “she had talked the other two into coming in here with her, and now she was showing them how to hold yourself straight” (Paragraph 2).
Some of Queenie’s power may be genuine, that is, not the narrator’s conjecture. She has the boldness (or perhaps naiveté) to enter the store wearing only a swimsuit and no shoes, and she protests Lengel’s reprimand. These elements are catalysts for the story, and it is Queenie, as much as the protagonist himself, who drives the plot action. Sammy’s attention is initially drawn by Queenie’s beauty, but once he imagines her wealth, Queenie takes on even more psychological power for him.
While Queenie represents to Sammy the enticing ease, power, and beauty of the upper class, he also assumes she holds the arrogance and disconnectedness that can attend it. This reflects some of his class anxiety, and he assumes her behavior conveys an attitude that she is above the rules and above the people at the A&P.
Stokesie
Even though he is 22 and only a few years older than Sammy, Stokesie represents to Sammy one of the possible futures available in their small town. Unlike Sammy, Stokesie displays some self-awareness of his ogling over Queenie and her friends, and remembers his responsibility as a married man. His instinct, of course, is to continue looking, but he has enough maturity to police his own actions. Like Sammy, Stokesie appears to be an observer, especially as he strains to listen to the encounter between Queenie and Lengel. A product of his maturity, Stokesie seems to understand his duty and the value of his job, and he wants to eventually be the store manager. He witnesses all that unfolds with the girls in the bathing suits, but he does not feel the need to interfere one way or the other. This could suggest several things: He may be apathetic, he may be self-controlled, or he may be timid. Sammy offers no commentary on this front.
Due to the fact that he has dependents, Stokesie possesses a greater awareness of responsibility and is therefore not so concerned with matters of class. His reaction to Sammy quitting is not included in the story, but the reader may infer that he falls on Lengel’s side. Stokesie’s positioning as Sammy’s friend represents the way in which two people in the same situation and of the same class may differ in their core beliefs.
Lengel
Lengel is described mainly in authoritarian terms, from his entrance into the story through a door bluntly marked “MANAGER” to his “sad Sunday-school-superintendent stare” aimed at Queenie and her friends (Paragraph 14). He has presumably been the manager of the A&P for considerable time and has established some respect amongst his workers. The tone surrounding Lengel, however, is one of defeat and dull frustration. Like Stokesie, he clearly possesses a great sense of duty, but it comes at a price.
Rather than showing surprise at Sammy’s announcement that he is quitting, Lengel seems exasperated, but he still shows genuine concern for Sammy’s rash decision; moreover, despite Sammy’s troublesome behavior, Lengel offers him a second chance—a window of forgiveness—to come back and work at the store. As the identifiable antagonist, Lengel is not an active villain but is simply acting according to his role as manager. Because Sammy sees the A&P as a place of dreadful conformity, he associates Lengel with that same evil.
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By John Updike
