In both Stuart Dybek’s Pet Milk and John Cheever’s Reunion, vivid memories of the main character’s past are explored. These memories consist of important interactions with loved ones, that work to provide a greater insight into the character’s identity for the reader. Although the stories differ in tone they both use imagery, dialogue and symbolism to aid in the perception of the characters as well as the overall deeper meaning of the story.
The authors of Pet Milk and Reunion use different tactics to help illustrate varying perceptions of the main characters and their loved ones. Dybek uses detailed imagery, as well as a small amount of dialogue to show the perceptions of the main character, the grandma, and the past girlfriend. Cheever also creates clear perception of the characters, but in his short story he uses more dialogue than descriptive imagery to establish an understanding of the main character mindset towards his father.
In Pet Milk,…show more content… In the beginning, the narrator recalls being a young boy meeting his father at the train station, hugging him, and smelling his “father the way” his “mother sniffs a rose” (Cheever 1). He emphasizes that he “hoped that someone would see us together” and that he “wanted some record of our having been together” (Cheever 1). It’s clear that as a boy, when he first saw his father he was eager and optimistic. This differs towards the end of the story when the boy’s father is depicted as an obnoxious drunk who enjoys harassing people. At the very end, his father says, ““Now, just wait a second, sonny”, “Just wait a second. I want to get a rise out of this chap” followed by the narrator’s response “Goodbye Daddy” and the main character explaining to the reader that it “was the last time I saw my father” (Cheever 2). There is a major shift in the speaker’s thoughts on his father that is depicted by his excited behavior in the beginning that changes to a disheartened
