A&P

Sammy is well-accustomed to his job at the A&P; he knows which customers to be extra careful around, knows that he is allowed to engage in playful conversation with his coworker Stokesie, and knows, generally, the rules of the store. Although he is comfortable in this setting, Sammy’s relationship to his job is not an altogether satisfactory one. On various levels, Sammy feels trapped in his position and stifled by what is expected of him. When Queenie and her friends enter the story, he is suddenly made painfully aware of the confining nature of not just his job but also his class. In order to please everyone, he must remain obedient to his assigned roles; he should not overstep, or question Lengel, or stick up for the girls. In other words, he should not express himself as an individual and should remain consistent in conforming to the crowd. The tension between conforming and expressing one’s individuality is represented in “A&P” as Sammy grows increasingly doubtful of his hitherto accepted role.

The more time he spends watching Queenie, the more Sammy’s urge to rebel grows. Early in the story, Sammy is careful to defuse the situation with the customer whom he describes as “a witch about fifty with rogue on her cheekbones and no eyebrows,” before stating that he “got her feathers smoothed and her goodies into a bag” (Paragraph 2). Here, he is conforming perfectly to his role as a clerk, promptly ensuring customer satisfaction. At this point in the story, his individuality is confined to his own thoughts, where he is free to label the customers as “sheep” and so on. Though these characterizations reflect the unreliability of the narrator, the customers seem, to Sammy, to have one-track minds as they complete their grocery shopping, and Sammy remarks with wry hyperbole that it would take an explosion to shake them out of their stupor. Toward the end of the story, Sammy recalls that “[a] couple customers that had been heading for my slot began to knock against each other, like scared pigs in a chute” (Paragraph 30). Above all, Sammy does not believe that one can maintain any of their individuality if they conform to the group; he sees no possibility of a compromise. In his eyes, to conform is to enter an animal state. This fear drives his compromised perceptions of others.

While Sammy’s understanding of conformity and individualism is somewhat black-and-white, it shows how suffocating settings of conformity (like the A&P) can be. Sammy admires what he believes is Queenie’s brazenness and the “cute” way in which she pulls a dollar out of her bathing suit—all markers of her individuality. He realizes, however, that such unapologetic individuality has no place in his immediate surroundings. This realization is, in part, why Sammy decides to quit his job. Even in his retrospective retelling of the story, Sammy continues to affirm his decision, saying, “at least my family says it’s sad but I don’t think it’s sad myself” (Paragraph 12). By quitting, Sammy is standing up for his individuality, and he cannot help seeing some triumph in that decision.