"A&P" In Class Close Reading #3

In the short story “A&P” by John Updike there is also the idea of women as a symbol, but I think that the woman in “A&P” symbolizes power rather than transcendence. The main female character is nicknamed “Queenie” which puts her in a position of power right off the bat. Sammy even says in the story that “she kind of led them,” meaning the other girls. Queenie has a commanding presence throughout the story, especially in the passage when she is walking through the aisles. He describes her as going “against the usual traffic” in the aisles, which hints that she is above the norm in a sense. This is further supported by the fact that Sammy puts the rest of the shoppers in labels such as “sheep” and “houseslaves,” which suggests that he sees everyone in the town as submissive in comparison. Sammy’s boss towards the end of the story attempts to conform and disempower the girls, which sets off Sammy’s rebellion. I think that having power is important to Sammy and Queenie symbolizes the power that he wants. I also think that when Queenie was sort of disempowered at the end by Lengel, it was symbolic of how the town he lives in does that to everyone, including Sammy himself. All of this prompted his rebellion in the end, which wasn’t even acknowledged by the very women he was idealizing. Sammy, much like the narrator in “Araby”, made a vain attempt to impress the woman who embodied the very goal he was trying to achieve.