Concepts of Freedom in John Updike’s “A & P”

John Updike’s “A & P” offers a first person narrative of a young supermarket employee in a typical blue collar town. Sammy tells us a story about the events and observations that lead up to eventually quitting his job. The narration is immediate in tone and feels as if you are in the middle of a conversation with Sammy himself. Within the text we are offered Sammy’s thoughts of social class, disdain for town-folk, and his perceived need to achieve a higher station in life. Sammy’s dreams and beliefs are immature in nature; his thinking that one’s success is defined by money, prestige, and social class is flawed. The interactions Sammy has during this one day at the A&P give the reader insights into Updike’s thoughts on freedom, changes, and growth in a young man’s life. Updike uses Sammy’s experiences to illustrate the moment of maturity that occurs when a world view changes from a self-gratifying perspective to a chivalric, protective adult perception, while clearly proving that heroic gestures are not as simple as one may wish for.

“A & P” seems like a simple story about adolescent sexual desires, but beneath the obvious layer of superficiality, Sammy finds freedom in the various expressions of beauty. Sammy, the protagonist of the story, is working at his common job, with common co-workers, at a decidedly common store. While tending his duties of ringing up items for “cash-register-watchers” (Updike 955) he notices three bikini clad girls in the bread aisle. After dismissing the first two as pudgy and unattractive, he focuses his attention on “Queenie,” the presumed leader of the pack. He notices the details of her bare feet and bikini “with the straps pushed off,” and “nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her,” a sight that “was more than pretty” (Updike 956). It’s at this point that we read him objectifying the girls, giving them classical sculpture attributes while pursuing his sexual desires in thought. It is important that Updike set up the feeling that Sammy might be engaging in wrong behavior, and that acting on his hormones alone may not be the proper response in those moments. He is begin to gain a level of clarity throughout the text, allowing Sammy to both recognize the beauty of these girls, while subconsciously preparing to use this situation as a catalyst for finding a deeper meaning of his personal freedom.

Sammy’s internalization of social statuses, and a highly acute sense of class distinctions, shapes one of his world views, although it is skewed and misguided. He is aware of his connection to the “sheep [people] pushing their carts down the aisle” and “houseslaves in pin curlers” (Updike 957), proving an antipathy to his own social standing and his employment at the dead-end job of the conservative grocery store. Throughout the entire narrative, Sammy describes his customers with references to animal noises, Salem witch trials, and the like, artificially placing the masses from his hometown below him and elevating his sense of superiority. To further illustrate the class divide Sammy mentions that “It’s not as if we’re on the Cape” and that town folk haven’t looked at the ocean in decades. When observing “Queenie” for the first time she “didn’t even have shoes on” (Updike 956), arousing both his sexual appetite and his immediate ability to deduce she is from the “Point,” an upscale summer colony that distinguishes those with means. He is “attracted to the girl not only by her physical beauty, but also by her regal bearing and … disdain for small-town mores” (Peck Par. 2). It is everything that he wants: an air of superiority and upper middle class attitude. The text refers to “Queenie” purchasing herring snacks immediately causing Sammy to imagine her family holding martinis around a nice glass serving plate of toothpick hors d’oeuvres. It is his misguided view that upward mobility on the socio-economic ladder is a chance at freedom, and Sammy attempts “to join the group of girls whose social position allows them considerably more freedom than his own” (Caldwell Par. 14). Ironically, when he quits his job, he is left in a more precarious situation financially, but has achieved a false sense of freedom in his actions. By wanting to be like a “Pointer,” he comes closer to his ideal of freedom and his self indulgent outlook.

After objectifying the girls, and finding a sense of freedom in their beauty, Sammy begins to develop a set of morals, compassion, and heroic notions that give him a new point of view on life. No longer does “Queenie” simply represent his sexual ethos, but she now becomes a damsel in distress, needing to be saved. Sammy’s maturity rises as he begins to take on a protectionist stance with the three girls, having watched McMahon, the butcher, “patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints” (Updike 957). Sammy is offered a glimpse of himself, as if looking in a mirror, and finds a repulsion in the act of sexual objectification. The butcher’s “interest is clearly erotic, not aesthetic” (Porter 321) which now offends Sammy’s newfound chivalry. It is within this mind change, this new found option on how to act, as shown through the first person narrative John Updike employs, that Sammy begins to understand that “he doesn’t want to be ‘that guy’” shifting his feelings from “exploitative to protective” (Caldwell Par. 5). He has made a definitive choice, in his mind, to stand up for the girls and to save them, as a proper hero would, from the evil butcher. This is stressed even more in his interaction with Lengel, the store manager, when he decides to gain their attention by quitting, as if he could not work in a place that treats these girls with such disdain.

The most compelling argument that Updike advances in “A & P” is the action of Sammy quitting his job, giving form to thought on a personal concept of freedom he has developed, and a realistic view of what individuality truly means. Initially believing, in a fairy tale naiveté, that heroic acts lead to glory, Sammy quickly discovers the complexities of the world in which he lives in. Originally wanting the girls to notice his heroism in defending their honor, Sammy quits his job to Lengel (the manager) “quick enough for them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero” (Updike 959). The girls just kept on going right “into the electric eye” (Updike 959), exiting the store without any notice of the chilvarous act, giving a slight pause to Sammy’s action. At this point, having already committed vocally to the concept of quitting, Sammy is given the opportunity to back out, which he doesn’t take. Lengel mentions that “you [Sammy] don’t want to do this to your Mom and Dad,” (Updike 959) as his income is a supplement to the family’s and his quitting will be a hardship. He is now in disagreement with the society that he has been raised within, aware that a separation has occurred “from the flock, from the “A&P crowd,”” and he “has chosen to set himself against the majority” (Porter 321). Idealistic in nature, it is at this point that Sammy realizes “that once you begin a gesture it’s fatal not to go through with it” (Updike 960). The fatality exists in a sense that he can lose his compass bearing, his honesty with himself, by not standing up for his convictions. What started as a somewhat selfish and heroic act turned into a life changing moment in Sammy’s development as a mature adult. He doesn’t want to be false to his budding sense of integrity. Sammy “refuses to be captured by conformity and monotony,” and he “has chosen to live honestly and meaningfully” (Mcfarland 96) in that action of following through with a decidedly Emersonian quality. Ironically though, his action immediately severs his tie to a conservative upbringing, as represented in the store itself, and leaves him with a “loneliness that signals his birth into alienation” (Detweiler 322). He becomes both victor and victim, asserting independence from his station in life, while realizing that what lie ahead is going to be harder now that he’s learned a sense of principle-centered freedom. He will no longer be able to feign ignorance when moral and ethical situations arise in the future because he has now become aware of the existence of those dilemmas.

Updike employs Sammy’s first person narrative to offer a real-time glimpse in a moment that changes his life. Providing subtle distinctions in freedom of choice, of beauty, and ultimately, of self discovery, Updike weaves a story that is of a person’s ability or inability to define personal freedoms. More importantly the author illustrates the complexities of life’s choices, the rewards and consequences of actions, and the rite of passage that young adults experience. At the end of the story readers are left with a sense of Sammy’s awakening to the harsh climate that surrounds people in their daily lives. As David Peck puts it, “A & P” is “primarily a story of initiation, as a young boy moves from innocence (and ignorance) to experience (and knowledge)” (Par. 5). Updike asserts that the ultimate form of individuality, and freedom, occurs when a person accepts the conflicts within themselves, makes amends, and finds a form of serenity in their newfound knowledge.

Caldwell, Tracy M. “John Updike’s “A & P.” Literary Contexts in Short Stories: John Updike’s ‘A & P’ (2006): 19 pars. Literary ReferenceCenter. EBSCO. LansingCommunity College Library, Lansing, MI. 7 November 2007. <http://search.ebscohost.com>.

Detweiler, Robert. “Pigeon Feathers: The Design of Design,” in John Updike, Twayne Publishers, 1973, pp. 60-79. Rpt in Short Story Criticism. Ed. David Segal. Volume 13. Detroit: Gale Research, Inc.

Mcfarland, Ronald. “Updike and the Critics: Reflections on “A & P”.” Studies in Short Fiction Volume 2 (1983): 95+. Literary ReferenceCenter. EBSCO. LansingCommunity College Library, Lansing, MI. 7 November 2007. <http://search.ebscohost.com>.

Peck, David. “A & P.” Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition (2004): 13 pars. Literary ReferenceCenter. EBSCO. LansingCommunity College Library, Lansing, MI. 13 November 2007. <http://search.ebscohost.com>.

Porter, M. Gilbert. “John Updike’s ‘A & P’: The Establishment and an Emersonian Cashier.” English Journal, Vol. 61, November, 1972, pp. 1115-58. Rpt in Short Story Criticism. Ed. David Segal. Volume 13. Detroit: Gale Research, Inc.

Updike, John. “A & P.” Literature and Ourselves: A Thematic Introduction for Readers and Writers. Eds. Gloria Mason Henderson, Bill Day, and Sandra Stevenson Waller. 5^th Ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. 955 – 960.