“His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he had just been given an injection of iron, and my stomach tightened when I heard how harsh the world would be for me from then on. In this, the last sentence of the story, Sammy looks back through the window of Lengel's store taking a seat behind the register. Through the window, Lengel appears cold and hard as metal, as unyielding physically as he was in his actions. Sammy connects the “hardness” of Lengel's appearance with 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 hard. Sammy's complacency has been deflated and he has learned that he is not capable of successfully overcoming every difficulty. Sammy has learned something 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 end result of Sammy's act of defiance is not a glorious liberation but just a young man at loose ends, struggling to redefine himself. Ultimately, any possession of girls that Sammy has experienced is revealed to be an illusion. He observed them, and that was it