People live in constant opposition between common sense and emotions. It is impossible to say which one is superior because, without reasonability, one’s life becomes disorganized and unpredictable. However, if one ignores the calling of the heart, they cannot find true happiness. People are born into a society that teaches them about the acceptable and not in communication with others. Some of these teachings are rightfully fundamental, others seem hard to explain, but all of them have the general comfort of living in society as a primary goal. A&P by Updike is a story of personal protest against the ‘general good’ for everyone, a path to self-respect, and the right to be different.
To understand the nature of the protest committed by the narrator, Sammy, it is critical to understand his psychological portrait. On the outside, Sammy is a young check-out slot cashier in the A&P grocery store. However, as soon as he starts his narration, his judgmental and criticizing nature manifests itself. The narrator has set high standards for himself, which is seen from his reluctance to associate himself with the shop’s customers; Sammy calls them ‘house-slaves’ and ‘sheep’ (Mays 384). His colleague’s dream to become a manager in a tea company does not impress him either. Sammy is sure that he is better than the grey mass of stuffy people around him.
When the three girls in bathing suits appear, the narrator immediately identifies with the most attractive one. He gives her a nickname, ‘Queenie,’ which fully reflects the emotions of admiration and respect she provokes in him. Her explicit expression of nonconformity (the grocery shop was far from the beach) resonated with his moral values. This incident stirred a deep psychological conflict in the narrator. Namely, in his eyes, the girl already was what he had always wanted to be. Hence, the nickname ‘Queenie’ does not only describe the girl’s beauty and confidence but reveals that Sammy, too, wants to see himself as the king of his life. The conflict, though, lies in his current position — people whom he deeply disrespects command and reprimands him.
Sammy wants to show his support to the girl not because she is beautiful, but because he realizes that he works for the system that hates ‘different’ and ‘happy.’ His disdain matures at this moment as he sees that conformity does not make people happy. There is also no general rule that would satisfy everyone. However, what ires him the most is that these people want to deprive others of the right to be their unique selves and thus to be happy. A system that lets public humiliation of ‘different’ people happen regularly cannot encourage each individual’s happiness. Hence, the decision to quit the job was so fast and inevitable for the narrator. For him, A&P was the hotbed of hypocrisy and arrogance. He would not be able to respect himself and think so highly of his possibilities if he had ignored this situation.
In light of the mentioned above, the narrator saved his self-esteem by quitting the job. The shop itself was a metaphor for the whole society in which everything unusual becomes subject to strong criticism. Indeed, it does not matter if they were three girls in bathing suits or three men in clowns’ costumes. What is important is that being different should not be punished unless it is hurting someone else.
Work Cited
Mays, Kelly J.. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Thirteenth edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019. Print.