"(Kennedy and Gioia, 128) Sammy sees the other shoppers for what they are - not individuals, but as the components of a system, a mere " herd," their personalities limited to the very automatic gestures and directions imposed by the "shopping list": "You could see them, when Queenie's white shoulders dawned on them, kind of jerk, or hop, or hiccup, but their eyes snapped back to their own baskets and on they pushed. I bet you could set off dynamite in an a&P and the people would by and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists and muttering 'Let me see, there was a third thing, began with a, asparagus, no, ah, yes, applesauce!."(Kennedy and Gioia, 129) Queenie's "white shoulders," bare and indicative of purity, are the symbol of the natural, uncensored by social rules world of " the beach," whereas the " consumers " are symbols of the automatic drives of production and consumption of...

This symbol of the natural bareness in Lengel's remonstrance to the girls, who tells them to come next time " with their shoulders covered." Also, the automatic language or "music " of the cash register is the perfect expression of the automatic supermarket life.
The peak of this opposition is to be found in the manager's words " this is not the beach," words that he significantly repeats. The two worlds, the natural and the artificial are simply incompatible, the former with its bareness, as the hands of Queenie bare " as God made them ," the other like in Ginsberg's poem a Supermarket in California, "the neon fruit supermarket ," with its " enumerations," as symbolic of the ties and chains imposed by a consumerist society, as opposed to the natural one.

Works Cited

Kennedy, X.J. And Dana Gioia. An Introduction to Fiction. New York: Longman,…