A&P: Analysis
Themes
The Power of Desire
From the moment the girls walk into the A&P, they attract the gaze of every man in the store, which demonstrates the power their sexuality gives them over the opposite sex. Although they make a point of acting nonchalant (Queenie more successfully than the other two), the girls are well aware of the eyes tracking their every move. As long as the girls do not acknowledge the men’s interest, they are in a position of power—inspiring desire but not subject to it. Their strategy works well, and the A&P’s male employees—even the unyielding Lengel—show some degree of sexual interest. However, Lengel ultimately undermines this strategy and tries to lessen their power. By confronting the girls so bluntly, Lengel calls the girls on their behavior, embarrassing them by suggesting that they are well aware of the inappropriateness of their attire. Queenie’s claim—“We are decent”—is an attempt to reestablish their superior position, implying that it is Lengel who is being inappropriate.
The girls have a profound transformative effect on the men in the A&P, especially Sammy. They inspire the men to act piggishly, as they stare at the girls while making lewd comments to one another. For these men, their response seems rooted in hormones, and Lengel’s attempt to get the girls to respect social norms is an effort both to control the desire of such young men and to protect the girls from it. In Sammy, however, the girls inspire a more profound reaction. Under the influence of his desire for Queenie, Sammy’s imagination is awakened, and he takes a dramatic step to change his life. Sammy’s actions are not purely motivated by his desire, but they are inseparable from it.
The Mystery of Other Minds
Throughout the story, Sammy exhibits prowess in both observing others and gleaning insights from those observations, but the girls suggest to him the true mystery of other minds. When a customer reprimands Sammy for a mistake, Sammy characterizes the woman as a witch straight out of Salem and thinks, “I know it made her day to trip me up.” For Sammy, the customers at the A&P are all too easy to understand. The same holds true for Stokesie and Lengel, who Sammy believes he has thoroughly figured out. When the girls enter the store, however, Sammy wonders what on earth they’re thinking. Although Sammy makes an effort to understand the girls, especially Queenie, and believes that he is successful, his confidence is undermined by his actions at the end of the story. His grand gesture of sympathy for the girls—his quitting—goes unnoticed, and his motivations are muddled and confused. He is left with a sense that, for all his ability to observe and understand others, he must now turn his inquisitive eye on himself.
Motifs
Girl-Watching
Girl-watching is what sets “A&P” in motion, and Sammy provides copious details of the three girls as he watches them walk around the store. Sammy describes each of the girls in turn, noticing the details of their bathing suits, their hairstyles, and their bodies. His interest is explicitly sexual. Sammy appraises the first friend’s “can” and almost becomes faint over Queenie’s breasts. He notices the varied shades of their skin and even analyzes Queenie’s gait. Such detailed observations suggest the extent of Sammy’s rapturous appreciation of beauty as well as the underlying aggression in the male gaze. Sammy’s girl-watching leads to both a warm, imaginative interest in the object of his desire and a darker, more possessive feeling (at one point, Sammy refers to “my girls”). In the end, any possession of the girls Sammy has experienced is revealed to be an illusion. He has watched them, and that is all.
Brand Names
Brand names appear throughout “A&P,” setting the story firmly in the postwar period of American prosperity, when a flood of consumer goods hit the markets and advertising became a pervasive force. Updike tries to capture the sense of plenitude in a well-stocked market by referring to “the cat-and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-rice-raisins-seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-soft-drinks-crackers-and-cookies aisle.” But he also tries to convey some of the artificiality inherent in an environment dominated by marketing and branding by focusing on the cheesy labels on all the merchandise. He repeatedly invokes the brand names: Hiho crackers, Diet Delight peaches, Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream, and so on. They are all unified under the A&P logo and surrounded by cars such as the Ford Falcon. For better or worse, brands and labels are an important part of the cultural landscape, and their artificiality is one of the things against which Sammy ultimately rebels.
Symbols
Bathing Suits
The bathing suits that the girls wear into the A&P are an emblem of the girls’ casual disregard of the social rules of the small town. They also represent the girls’ deliberate provocation, an attempt to attract the eye of every man they encounter. Sammy is initially drawn to the girls simply because they are scantily clad, young, and attractive. However, for Sammy, the bathing suits come to symbolize freedom and escape from the world in which he finds himself. What he ultimately finds compelling about the girls in their bathing suits is that they have disrupted the system of rules that he has been forced to observe, an observation that Lengel, the authority figure, underscores by trying to enforce the rules the girls have violated. When Sammy quits his job, he significantly removes the corporate uniform (apron and bowtie) that establishes his place in the system. However, the freedom of the bathing-suited girls remains unavailable to him. Sammy ends up alone, in a white shirt his mother ironed for him, wondering what to do next.
Herring Snacks
The Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream purchased by Queenie take on a symbolic value in Sammy’s eyes when he hears Queenie explain that she is buying them for her mother. Instantly, Sammy has a vision of the kind of party at which such herring snacks would be served, and it is a world away from the parties his own parents throw. Sammy mentally contrasts the white jackets, herring snacks, and sophisticated cocktails of Queenie’s social set with the lemonade, Schlitz beer (a working-class brew), and novelty glasses of his own parents’ group. Sammy understands that from Queenie’s perspective, “the crowd that runs the A&P must look pretty crummy.” Sammy’s sense of his own superiority to his surroundings is both heightened and humbled by this realization. But rather than resent Queenie for her social advantages, Sammy envies her freedom from the constraints he himself feels. Quitting his job, then, is both a doomed attempt to impress the girl and a gesture of self-liberation.
ARABY: Analysis
In “Araby,” the allure of new love and distant places mingles with the familiarity of everyday drudgery, with frustrating consequences. Mangan’s sister embodies this mingling, since she is part of the familiar surroundings of the narrator’s street as well as the exotic promise of the bazaar. She is a “brown figure” who both reflects the brown façades of the buildings that line the street and evokes the skin color of romanticized images of Arabia that flood the narrator’s head. Like the bazaar that offers experiences that differ from everyday Dublin, Mangan’s sister intoxicates the narrator with new feelings of joy and elation. His love for her, however, must compete with the dullness of schoolwork, his uncle’s lateness, and the Dublin trains. Though he promises Mangan’s sister that he will go to Araby and purchase a gift for her, these mundane realities undermine his plans and ultimately thwart his desires. The narrator arrives at the bazaar only to encounter flowered teacups and English accents, not the freedom of the enchanting East. As the bazaar closes down, he realizes that Mangan’s sister will fail his expectations as well, and that his desire for her is actually only a vain wish for change.
The narrator’s change of heart concludes the story on a moment of epiphany, but not a positive one. Instead of reaffirming his love or realizing that he does not need gifts to express his feelings for Mangan’s sister, the narrator simply gives up. He seems to interpret his arrival at the bazaar as it fades into darkness as a sign that his relationship with Mangan’s sister will also remain just a wishful idea and that his infatuation was as misguided as his fantasies about the bazaar. What might have been a story of happy, youthful love becomes a tragic story of defeat. Much like the disturbing, unfulfilling adventure in “An Encounter,” the narrator’s failure at the bazaar suggests that fulfillment and contentedness remain foreign to Dubliners, even in the most unusual events of the city like an annual bazaar.
The tedious events that delay the narrator’s trip indicate that no room exists for love in the daily lives of Dubliners, and the absence of love renders the characters in the story almost anonymous. Though the narrator might imagine himself to be carrying thoughts of Mangan’s sister through his day as a priest would carry a Eucharistic chalice to an altar, the minutes tick away through school, dinner, and his uncle’s boring poetic recitation. Time does not adhere to the narrator’s visions of his relationship. The story presents this frustration as universal: the narrator is nameless, the girl is always “Mangan’s sister” as though she is any girl next door, and the story closes with the narrator imagining himself as a creature. In “Araby,” Joyce suggests that all people experience frustrated desire for love and new experiences.
Compare and Contrast
“Araby” and “A&P” are stories of unsuccessful attempts to escape from ordinary lives. What catches the reader’s attention in both stories first, are the settings. In both stories, the protagonists describe in detail their neighborhoods and their daily routines, which help to reveal the boys’ attitudes toward their lives. The boy in “Araby” is trapped in the dullness and the gloominess of a city in Ireland. Likewise, Sammy, in “A&P,” sees everyone in the supermarket as sheep. In this way, we know that both characters are not happy and have no ambitions. With nothing to hold on to, both characters are in search of something that will give them the courage to do something different, something that will spice up their lives.
For the boy in “Araby,” the escape from his boring everyday life comes with his love for a girl. She is the only light in his dark life, his only source for joy. He devotes himself to this girl so much that she becomes a god-like figure. Similarly, when Sammy sees Queenie, one of the three girls wearing swimming suits in the supermarket, she becomes the long-awaited light in his life. The boys delude themselves into thinking that they must rescue the girls: The girl in “Araby” is sad because she cannot go to a festival, and Queenie is sad because she has been scolded in front of everyone by the manager of the supermarket. The boy in “Araby” “imagined that [he] bored [his] chalice safely through a throng of foes. In contrast, Sammy quits his job, thinking he is now the girl’s hero, who has stood up against his boss to save her from the embarrassment: “So I say ‘I quit’ to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero.” However, it is not long before both of them regret their sacrifices. The boy in “Araby” realizes that he is too young for the girl, that he brought too little money to the bazaar, and that he is never going to be her lover. By contrast, Sammy realizes that he cannot do anything but work as a lowly cashier at a supermarket and that he is never going to be Queenie’s hero. After these realizations they both find themselves in emptiness. The boy is angry with himself (“I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger”), and Sammy finds himself in a state of confusion (“My stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.”)
“A&P” and “Araby” are stories of escape from ordinary life. Although the boys hold false beliefs about the control they have over their own lives, their intentions are the same. They attempt to break free from the unpleasant environments into which they were born, but only to realize that they are weak.
