wakeupaman

Carefully read John Cheever's "Reunion." Read "Thinking about the Text" questions following the story.

Read my observations and questions. Then write a fully developed, well-organized essay about the story. You do not need to respond directly to anything our textbook or I touch upon. You may want to approach your essay from a different direction. Regardless, you must write a unified essay that addresses an important point Cheever's short story entertains. Write an introductory paragraph, two or three body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph. In your essay, have one strong, unifying argument.

Select and carefully analyze specific textual evidence that supports your claim. Do no research. Plagiarism results in failure for the course.

 

Charlie, the story's narrator, could be on college break and traveling from "grandmother's in the Adirondacks to a cottage on the Cape that [his] mother had rented." He is financially secure. His father is a member of a club "in the Sixties," an upscale part of Manhattan.

 

If the "have-nots" have a tough road, maybe so do the "haves." Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing" creates a vivid picture of what societal and economic constraints can produce in persons from poor communities. Maybe Cheever's story creates an equally dismal picture for a person of the upper class. How can a rich man like Charlie's father be a "victim" of his society?

 

Maybe a person does follow in a parent's footsteps despite oneself; avoiding a fate mapped out by genetics takes a Herculean effort. Upon seeing his father at a distance for the first time in three years, Charlie says, "[H]e was my flesh and blood, my future and my doomE" Charlie suspects he himself will grow to be like his father. Can Charlie escape his father's fate?