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30 pages 1 hour read

John Cheever

Reunion

Fiction | Short Story | Middle Grade | Published in 1962

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Symbols & Motifs

Grand Central Station

Grand Central Station serves as the physical setting where Charlie both arrives in and departs from New York City. For Charlie, the train station is a place that literally and figuratively brings him toward and away from his father.

The train station bookends the narrative, and it helps to develop Charlie’s characterization. When Charlie arrives in New York, he is “going from [his] grandmother’s house in the Adirondacks to a cottage on the Cape” (518), which references a literal transition and journey. The reader isn’t given any more context as to why Charlie was with his grandmother—it could have been a visit or a permanent living situation. Charlie’s mother has rented the cottage. The cottage on the Cape is potentially where Charlie is moving, or where he is staying temporarily. Charlie is in a transitional state in his life at the station, and it is in the transitional state that Charlie decides to address his relationship with his father by arranging this meeting.

The locomotive is the means by which he sees his father again, his “flesh and blood” (518). In their hour and a half together, Charlie truly sees his father for the first time, and his idolized perceptions of the man evaporate when he chooses to walk away from him forever. This decision happens at the train station, where he says, “Goodbye, Daddy” (520), signifying his transition away from his childlike adoration and his journey toward a more realistic perspective of his father.

Photograph

When Charlie shakes hands with his father for the first time in three years, he yearns for a photograph to record their time together. Because of Charlie’s attitude toward his father in this moment—open adoration—the photograph represents the ideal or perfect expectations.

The fact that Charlie yearns for a photograph in his first minutes with his father advances the theme of Expectation Versus Reality. The boy’s need to capture this moment in time reveals his lofty expectations for this meeting. In addition to the photograph, he states, “I hoped that someone would see us together” (518). The desire to be seen accompanies feelings of pride; therefore, Charlie’s narration indicates just how much he idolizes his dad and how much he anticipates a perfect reunion. His father’s interactions with waiters and the clerk throughout the story prove that the real person standing before Charlie is nothing like his expectations. Instead of getting a photograph, Charlie simply walks away from his father and gets on a train, never to see him again.

The Waiters/Clerk

The recurring characters of the waiters and the clerk in “Reunion” serve as a motif acting as a foil to Charlie’s father. All these characters oppose his father in words and actions. For example, when the man yells and claps at the first restaurant, the elderly waiter merely responds “quietly” (519). In the second establishment, Charlie’s father is irate that the waiter will not serve Charlie another drink, but the server politely apologizes and adheres to the rules. The pattern is repeated at each restaurant until the father’s diatribe at the newsstand is met with silence from the clerk. Even though each of these men are different characters, they serve the same purpose: to present the foil to Charlie’s father.

This motif works to develop the theme of Taking the High Ground. John Cheever juxtaposes Charlie’s father with a series of workers who respond with calm patience to his disrespectful tirades and tantrums. Through it all, multiple waiters address the father as “sir” while still standing firm in their position that he is in the wrong. In this way, the theme is not simply about turning the other cheek; it is about acting with decorum when faced with disrespect.

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