Assignments for Analysis. 1. The contrasting moods of the boy frame the story

1. The contrasting moods of the boy frame the story. Find the intermediate signals showing the stages of the change from his exuberant expectation to embarrassed disappointment. Why has Cheever chosen the naïve narrator? Is any judgment passed on any of the personages?

2. Explain the father’s behavior. Was it a consciously staged show? Was it his nature? Prove your answer by quotations from the text.

3. Pay attention not to forget the phrase from the first paragraph describing the manner in which he answered his son’s request to meet. Does it explain anything about the man?

4. Comment on the use of barbarisms and foreign words in the speech of the father.

5. Comment on the actual meaning of the title.

Before you make an overall analysis, indicate the following SDs and EMs & try to explain their role in the story, if there is any:

1. He was a stranger to me—my mother divorced him three years ago and I hadn’t been with him since—but as soon as I saw him I felt that he was my father, my flesh and blood, my future and my doom.

2. He put his arm around me, and I smelled my father the way my mother sniffs a rose. It was a rich compound of whiskey and after-shave lotion, shoe polish, woolens, and the rankness of a mature male.

3. I hoped that someone would see us together. I wished that we could be photographed. I wanted some record of our having been together.

4. “ GarVon! Kellner! Cameriere! You! Could we trouble you to bring us two more of the same.”

5. “That,” my father said, “is none of your God-damned business.”

6. “Well, the hell with you. Vada all’inferno. Let’s go, Charlie.”

7. The last time I saw my father was in Grand Central Station …. and that was the last time I saw my father.

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