The Wrysons by John Cheever - Essay Example

 The Wrysons by John Cheever “The Wrysons” by John Cheever is an example of how a perfect storytelling technique can make an otherwise mundane plot vivid and turn otherwise unpleasant characters into lovable and sympathetic. This technique comes from the witty use of several literary elements. Those three elements used by John Cheever in his short story “The Wrysons” are irony, details, and amplification. With a wink from the author (“given these unpleasant facts, then, about these not attractive people…”) (Cheever 321: par. 9), the readers may proceed to the analysis of Cheever’s literary elements. The first element to attract attention is irony. Irony is usually defined as “the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite” (“Irony”). That is, there is always some opposition, some foreshadowing and/or subversion of readers’ expectations behind this literary element. In Cheever’s short story, two opposite realities represented in several ironic cues are, on the one hand, the catastrophic visions and the language of championing world-savers (“Donald Wryson, in his crusading zeal for upzoning, was out in all kinds of weather”) (Cheever 321: par. 9), and on the other hand, the reality of peaceful suburbia with its never-ending routines and fears to express even the most inoffensive intimate thoughts (Donald “took extraordinary precautions” (Cheever 321: par. 8) to prevent his wife from getting to know about his bakery). Thus, besides spicing up an otherwise uninteresting story about a conservative family, irony is also used here as a denominator of the two interconnected worlds, one safe and dull, with bunching excessive possessions thrown into garbage, and another dreadful and apocalyptic, born from the first reality and simultaneously threatening it. The overall ironic tone of the short story culminates in several joints of the plot: the first, and repeated in the end to create a loopback effect of composition, is the description of the first significant detail, an intruding stranger: They seemed to sense that there was a stranger at the gates – unwashed, tirelessly scheming, foreign, the father of disorderly children who would ruin their rose garden and depreciate their real-estate investment, a man with a beard, a garlic breath, and a book (Cheever 318: par. 1). The second culmination of ironic tone occurs in the description of supposed death of the couple of Wrysons where the pompous, mourning language contrasts the absurdity of their imaginary death and disrupts the fantasy as a whole: “Weakened by a long convalescence, she contracted pneumonia and departed this life” (Cheever 321: par. 9). These two culminations mark the peaks of tension between the two worlds described above: in both cases, there is some danger for the Wrysons’ order of life. The ironic tone foreshadows the catastrophe while simultaneously raising suspects that final collapse would not happen. And in a sense, it happens, but to the cake only, which is also very ironic. Both worlds, the mundane and the catastrophic, are vividly described with the abundance of passages of amplification, the second Cheever’s literary element. Irene’s dream includes the Homeric list of ships that builds up along with the growing discomfort; by contrast, in Donald’s memories and fantasies, spices, flour, sugar, nuts, and citron are amplified in the procedure of putting the world into a warm, digestible order, creating the feeling of security. When these amplifications collide, they “neutralize” each other: Donald’s fixation on the perfect order is ruined, while Irene’s nightmare of the loss of control gets burned. The tension from amplification of details is released and dissolved in final ironic remarks of the story. In addition, amplification serves for the convincing description of suburban settings: all those unnecessary letters that are going to be received by a poor orphan, as well as all those odd neighbors surrounding the Wrysons, are perfect characteristics of the family’s super-neat, frozen world. Finally, the third of the literary elements of “The Wrysons” is detail. Details may either be used to deepen the impression of the scene or to bring some contrasting object/situation into the setting. Cheever’s writing is rich in details due to its connection to place (a quite suburb with upzoning at the front of all troubles) and the nature of conflict (it’s a merely psychological conflict coming from the inner traumatic fixations of the characters on some situations). Details are often ironic, such as garlic smell in the description of an unknown foreigner cited above. Nevertheless, the author often uses them as a sign of disorder, of some sad or terrifying event. The medicine cabinet is the detail that cumulates the disastrous atmosphere in Irene’s dream: “She opened the medicine cabinet, the one place in the house that the Wrysons, in their passion for neatness, had not put in order” (Cheever 319: par. 4). The cabinet contains medication for Irene’s daughter, pills and potion bottles had been being stuffed there for years. Mother opens this place just in the apotheosis of the disaster in her dream just to find out that in this emergency place, there is also disorder. Donald’s father leaved his wife long ago with a child. The clothing of Donald’s father (a house rose and buff-colored spats) as a detail contains a reference to his social status and personal carelessness as well as the sense of the only bitter reminder about the past days for Donald’s mother (Cheever 320: par. 5). The cake (which Donald bakes to calm himself down and usually throws away) turns out to be the most powerful, even symbolic, detail that resolves the conflict. Its sweetness (that makes it a sensual detail), its predestination to be thrown away convey the mood of both main characters. When the cake gets burned, they feel free from the sweet web of their illusions. However, as cake is not a pathetic detail, the reader gets free also – by the very ironic and yet sympathizing tone of the story. This way, three literary elements make a coherent whole: amplification creates tension that needs to be resolved; irony suggests ambiguity of the situation and foreshadows the catastrophe; and details strengthen the readers’ impression from the suburban events, making the threats of the two characters ponderous action drivers. Works Cited Cheever, John. “The Wrysons”. American Literature since the Civil War. Create edition. McGraw-Hill, 2011. 318-322. E-Book. “Irony”. The Oxford English Dictionary. 30 Oct 2012 < http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/irony>. Read More