Sexual Freedom and Adolescent Rebellion in John

Sexual freedom and adolescent rebellion in John Updike's "A&P"

The story of John Updike's "A&P" is a simple one: three girls in bathing suits walk into a supermarket in a 'shore town' that is largely populated by tourists in the summer. The girls cause a stir as they wander through the aisles. In general, the female customers are shocked while the males are rendered speechless with sexual desire. The A&P store manager Lengel tells the girls not to come back unless they are decently attired, apparently humiliating them. The main drama in the story comes from the internal conflict present in Sammy, one of the cashiers. Sammy sees the girls as a representative not just of a sexual fantasy, but of a life and a lifestyle he wants to emulate. By quitting, an apparently meaningless gesture, Sammy hopes to ally himself with the girls, rather than with his parents or his fellow cashier Stokesie who already is anchored to the town and his job as a cashier with a wife and two babies.

Sammy is particularly taken with one of the girls, whom he calls 'Queenie,' because of her regal bearing and the fact he assumes she is the leader of the other two girls. When she speaks, he projects a fantasy image onto her body of what her life is like, in contrast to his own, depressed lower middle-class existence: "Her father and the other men were standing around in ice-cream coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a big plate and they were all holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in them. When my parents have somebody over they get lemonade and if it's a real racy affair Schlitz in tall glasses with 'They'll Do It Every Time' cartoons stenciled on." Although Queenie is undeniably beautiful in her perfectly-fitting bathing suit and tan, Sammy clearly desires what she represents as much as he desires her bikini-clad body. Her insouciant bearing indicates her class standing and the fact that she is an outsider to the 'local' community, a community of which Sammy does not want to be a part.

This makes Sammy very different from his colleague Stokesie. Although Stokesie clearly notes that the girls are pretty, he also wants and needs his job because of his obligations. Sammy has contempt rather than respect for Stokesie's apple-polishing in front of the poss. "I forgot to say he thinks he's going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when it's called the Great Alexandrov and Petrooshki Tea Company or something." Sammy likes Stokesie but fears becoming like him. Stokesie is 'stuck' in his current place in life and doesn't seem to care about moving forward. Sammy has ambitions beyond the A&P, as manifested in his identification as well as attraction with Queenie when she tries to tell Lengel off. When Sammy says she is "getting sore now that she remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that runs the A&P must look pretty crummy," Sammy is clearly projecting an image upon Queenie, and assuming her thought processes mimic his own. Lengel's Sunday school mannerisms and morality are what Sammy despises about the town, not just the fact that Lengel is his manager and has power over him. And Sammy's statement that Queenie thinks the A&P is "crummy" is actually his own perception of the supermarket, whether he realizes it or not.

In throwing away his clerk's apron, Sammy takes a stand for sexual liberation and also for himself, namely the fact he is sick of ringing up order after order of canned pineapple juice and dealing with customers complaining about their orders. Tellingly, Sammy notes that his parents see his story as sad. They likely believe that their son should do and say whatever it takes to hold a job, no matter how bad. "Sammy, you don't want to do this to your Mom and Dad," says Lengel. The fact that his act is one of personal rebellion is rooted in Sammy's language when he bridles at Lengel's statement that the girls need to follow store 'policy. "Policy is what the kingpins want." Sammy is frustrated with the regimentation of a life based upon rules and wants 'out' -- the girls are likely more of an excuse and a motivator, rather than the 'cause' of his actions, in contrast to what his parents seem to think.

However, as liberated as Sammy may regard himself, he is still a teenage boy in a story set in the 1960s, and his objectifying view of the girls is hardly 'liberating' or enlightened in any positive, feminist sense. He may identify with their proud stand against Lengel, but he also takes a dismissive view of female intelligence. "Do you really think it's a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glassjar," he asks, and he makes fun of women customers with "six children and varicose veins mapping their legs." It is questionable if the girls took a stand about something that was not sexually-related that he would feel so strongly about standing up for them in a chivalric fashion. The reason for Sammy's jaded perspective upon women may partially be due to the fact he spends so much of the day dealing with bored housewives, like the woman whom he accidentally overcharges in the first scene of the story: "a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows." Sammy either sees women as unattractive 'witches' or as sexually desirous objects.