White Angel

Cunningham establishes the context for this story in the first paragraph, emphasizing the narrative importance of the era: “It was the sixties—our radios sang out love all day long. This of course is history. It happened before the city of Cleveland went broke, before its river caught fire” (1). This passage juxtaposes the optimism of 1960s music with the foreboding of ecological disaster; the narrator alludes to the Cleveland River Fire of 1969, when the surface of the river caught fire due to the water’s saturation with industrial waste. There is then the allusion to the city going “broke,” which happened in 1978 when the city defaulted on over $15 million in short-term loans from local banks. This was a landmark event since the Great Depression. As the story opens with these juxtapositions, Cunningham grounds the reader in the tumult of the 1960s. The music of love was only music, while the reality was ecological disaster and debt. This contrast develops the theme of generational conflict: The older characters have already faced many of life’s disappointments, and they are more conservative. They get jobs they don’t want, and they live responsibly at the cost of their dreams.

The young people, exemplified by Carlton, are impatient for change and recklessly experiment with drugs and alcohol, believing no harm will come to them. Carlton’s obsession with Woodstock, which he imparts to his younger brother, is another example of this optimism. Bobby asks if people really live at Woodstock, and Carlton says, “Man, you’ve got to stop asking that. The concert’s over, but people are still there. It’s the new nation. Have faith” (3). Here, Carlton refers to the famous Woodstock music festival of 1969. Both in the story and in American culture generally, this festival symbolizes the era’s youth who wanted to be part of the anti-establishment movement. These young people valued experimentation and alternative lifestyles, and the counterculture was, in many ways, a revolt against the world of the last generation.

The narrative explores this generational contrast most notably when the teachers gather for the party and the teenagers crash it. Carlton’s friends bring their own music and stir things into an unexpected wildness, playing The Rolling Stones as everyone dances. Bobby observes his brother’s antics and marvels reverently, “It’s a Woodstock move—[Carlton] is plotting a future in which young and old have business together” (10). With his long hair, youthful optimism, taste for rock and roll music and psychedelic drugs, Carlton is a symbol of the 1960s counterculture. He embodies both its youthful idealism and its risk, and the party represents this creative commingling of generations. All goes well until Carlton’s death, which seems to be an omen that his vision of the future will not be possible. Bobby ultimately reflects, “[W]e are living in the future, and it’s turned out differently from what we’d planned” (14).