Watermarks The Name Game by Randy Ritchie

John Updike's short story "A & P" reveals nineteen-year old Sammy, the central character, as a complex person. Although Sammy appears, on the surface, as carefree and driven by male hormones, he has a lengthy agenda to settle. Through depersonalization, Sammy reveals his ideas about sexuality, social class, stereotypes, responsibility, and authority. Updike's technique, his motif, is repeated again and again through the active teenage mind of the narrator Sammy.

Sammy is, like most young men, object-minded. The object of his mind is the female body. Although his upbringing and the fact that he is at work do not allow him to voice his admiration for the girls in bikinis at the A & P, he lets the reader know, in no uncertain terms, what he is thinking. He gives each girl a name--Plaid, Big Tall Goony Goony, and Queenie--based on his evaluation of their physical body parts. The game is one that teenagers play the world over, with countless hours spent seeing and being seen. The primary object to view, in Sammy's eyes, is the queen. He describes how "she must have felt in the corner of her eye me and over my shoulder Stokesie in the second slot watching, but she didn't tip. Not this queen" (28). Sammy goes on to tell how "she [...] turned so slow it made [his] stomach rub the inside of [his] apron" (28). The irony of the setting is that the girls, dressed in nothing but swimsuits, have turned the neighborhood grocery store into a human meat market, with themselves as the commodity of choice for the male consumer.

In Sammy's mind's eye, the queen was of such regal bearing that she commanded his worship. He envisioned his well-bred idol as being of a higher social class than his own. The sound of her voice captivated him, as if in a dream. "All of a sudden [he] slid right down her voice into her living room" (29), into the middle of an upper-class cocktail party. Queenie's selection of fancy herring snacks had become her status symbol. Sammy contrasted the queen's social circle with his own family's, where guests were served lemonade and cheap beer "in tall glasses with 'They'll Do It Every Time' cartoons stencilled [sic] on" (29). The perceived class difference was perhaps not all bad, however. It could be seen as a buffer in a situation such as Sammy's. If the object of his affection did not return his attention, Sammy was still free to admire and desire her from a distance, with little threat to his own ego.

Sammy's typical teenage focus on youthful good looks measured all women against the youth-culture standard, an impossible standard for all but those in their prime. Sammy could not see his customers as the reason for his employment. He certainly did not see their humanity, or their value as mothers and wives. He brought new creativity to stereotypes, seeing his customers as "houseslaves in pin curlers" (28) or "young [marrieds] screaming with [their] children" (30). His youth, along with his lack of life-experience, had not yet afforded him the opportunity to know anyone of the opposite sex as either partner or helpmate. His hormones colored everything he thought about; they forced the label of sexual or asexual on every female he laid eyes on, based on the attractiveness of the female's "scoops of vanilla" (30) or "soft-looking can" (27).

Like many young people, Sammy was at a crossroads in life. He had one foot firmly planted in childhood, but the other was propelling him into the role of a man. Responsibility was something for his parents' generation and those who aspired to fill their shoes. His own manhood was in question when he observed Stokesie's being "married, with two babies chalked up on his fuselage already" (28), yet he saw his friend and coworker as a peer in every other way. Sammy's rejection of the status quo, the mundane, was evident in his observation that Stokesie aspired someday to manage the A & P under a grandiose new name, the "Great Alexandrov and Petrooshki Tea Company or something" (28). Sammy's conflict went beyond that of the carefree child versus the responsible adult. He knew, deep inside, that he wanted no part of the boring, humdrum life of a grocery store clerk, living in the same town where everybody knew him as a child.

Through depersonalization, Sammy exhibited his rebellion against authority. Lengel, the manager, was described as "pretty dreary, [teaching] Sunday school and the rest" (29). Indeed, Lengel was an authority figure, both for Sammy and for his customers. As Sammy's boss and friend of Sammy's parents, Lengel held an especially high place in the chain of command in Sammy's life. Ironically, Sammy's description of Lengel's customers as "sheep pushing their carts down the aisle" (28) could also be seen as a commentary on religion. Lengel was not only a shepherd in his role as Sunday school teacher; he was also the caretaker for his female customers, seeing to their happiness while at the A & P. Lengel's nurturing behavior towards his Sunday school pupils and store customers was at odds with his handling of the three bikini-clad teenage girls in the grocery store. Sammy, on the other hand, did not see the discomfort the housewives experienced as problematic; he saw only the girls' discomfort at being admonished for their attire.

Sammy's final rejection of authority came when he told Lengel that he quit his job. Although it may be difficult to see Sammy's choice as responsible, he did have the courage of his convictions. His motivation was his usual driving force, testosterone, which Lengel most surely recognized. He gave Sammy every possible opportunity to avoid the inevitable; he pointed out how disappointed Sammy's parents would be. At that moment, Sammy realized he could not go back, not to his job as cashier or to his boyish ways. He experienced an epiphany that afternoon in the A & P.

Sammy's immaturity and lack of experience were largely to blame for his wrestling with conflicting roles in his transition from child to adult. Updike's protagonist was at the same time an imaginative, observant young man who stood by his convictions, defending the girls to the end. Sammy was perhaps more intelligent and more gutsy than one would like to give him credit for, however. He knew what he did not want out of life. On that Thursday afternoon in the A & P, his name game caught up with him. Quitting his job was to be a turning point for him, a time for him to confront his own issues of sexuality, social class, stereotyping, responsibility, and, on a deeper leve, authority.

Updike, John. "A & P." Literature: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. Ed. Robert DiYanni. 5th ed. New York: McGraw, 1998. 27-31.

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