“His face was dark gray and his back was stiff, as if he had just received an iron injection, and my stomach sort of dropped then that I felt how the world was going to be for me from now on. In this last sentence of the story, Sammy looks through the window of Lengel's store and takes a seat behind the cash register. Through the window, Lengel appears cold and hard as metal, as inflexible physically as in his actions. Sammy connects the "hardness" of Lengel's appearance to the harshness that awaits him in his future dealings with the world. In another sense, Sammy discovered that the world can be "hard" in the same way that a math problem can be difficult. Sammy's self-righteousness has been deflated and he has learned that he is not capable of overcoming all difficulties successfully. Sammy learned a little more about the kind of person he is and the specific ways in which the world will always be "hard" for and for him. In the case of "A&P," the ultimate result of Sammy's act of defiance is not glorious liberation but only a distraught young man struggling to redefine himself. Ultimately, any possession of the girls that Sammy experienced turns out to be an illusion. He observed them, and it was