Analyzing Sammy

Analyzing Sammy

As Sammy is revealed throughout "A&P", I couldn't help but feel a direct familiarity with his character. Sammy is nearly every American teenage male. Yes, he is sexist. Yes, he has a problem with authority. He is also hypersensitive around his elders, and prone to making brash decisions. Being so young and inexperienced, his mental self hasn't fully developed. While he does ogle the girls and make disrespectful observations, you can tell he is still relatively a good person. The comparison of Queenie's breasts and vanilla ice cream scoops is relatively tame. While the “soft-looking can” remark, could have been much more vulgar.

The conflict between Sammy and adults is also typical of a nineteen-year-old guy. His comment about the cash-register-watcher being a witch who, if born earlier, would have been burned “over in Salem” is a humorous example. Another antipathy is the way Sammy scolds old McMahon for doing exactly the same thing that he was doing two seconds previously. For Sammy, the idea of adulthood is defined by “houseslaves in pin curlers” and varicose veins. The life of an adult is consumed by the need to be part of the herd, become good consumers and pass judgment on the youth of society.

Between the two informal student responses, I think both are off base. Student one doesn’t even seem to have completed reading the entire story. Sammy doesn’t get fired, he quit while trying to be the defender of integrity that student two was referring to. I also can’t see how you could hate Sammy, he isn’t that bad of a guy. Besides a couple of off color remarks and being driven by desire, Sammy never really crosses into the realm of being a creep. What about the girls who came into a grocery store wearing bikinis? No shirts, no shoes, no service is a common policy in any store that has to deal with sanitary health issues. These girls knew what they were doing was against the norm in society. They came in begging for that type of attention.