It is interesting that although Sammy is the first-person
narrator of this excellent short story, we only find out his name when he quits at the
end of the tale. We know that Sammy is working as a checkout clerk in an A & P
supermarket. It is important to focus on his language and how we are able to tell a lot
about his character through his speech. He is clearly young, being nineteen, as he
speaks in a kind of vernacular slang:
She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet
broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun
never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her
legs.
It is interesting that
his character seems to vacillate between apathetic cynicism of those around him and a
kind of romantic sensibility that draws him to the girls in the supermarket. Note how he
refers to the "cash-register-watcher" he is serving:
...a witch about fifty with rouge on her
cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up. She'd been
watching cash registers for fifty years and probably never seen a mistake
before.
And yet, in spite of
this humorous cynicism and references to "freeloaders" and the "bum" in the store, he is
greatly impacted by Queenie. Watching the way that the manager Lengel embarrasses them
makes him want to commit an act of defiance against the strictness of society and
"policy." Although he tries to be a hero, his gesture goes largely unnoticed. Although
he tries to find the girls, they are long gone, and as he leaves, he suddenly has an
insight into "how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter" if he continues to
challenge the strict order of society as he has just
done.
Thus we can say that Sammy is a young man who
oscillates between funny, cynical views and romantic sensibilities. He shows empathy for
the girls and the way they are treated, and through quitting his job comes to an
understanding of what it is to defy society.
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