Reunion (short story)

"Reunion" is a short story by the American writer John Cheever, first published in 1962,^[1] and later included in The Stories of John Cheever (1978).

Summary

Themes

We do not choose our family

The first-person narrator writes early in the story, "He was a stranger to me [...] but as soon as I saw him I felt that he was my father, my flesh and blood, my future and my doom" (183). Our parents determine our genetics, which in turn help determine our personality, traits, and habits. Even though the narrator says "that was the last time I saw my father" (185), his father will "return" every time he finds himself acting similarly to his father.

Intelligent people can be the worst

The father has a secretary, shows up on time, and at different points speaks French, Italian, and German. We do not learn his profession, but the father projects an educated air, albeit one which is abusive to the service staff.

The "sorows of gin"

Cheever struggled with alcoholism himself, and the character of the father indeed drinks gin. While the reader is left to make sense of why the father acts like a raging alcoholic, at a simple level this character does not know how to relate to his estranged son in any sort of healthy, normal way, so he fills the void with abusive interactions with waitstaff, to the mild horror of his son.

Characters

Son and narrator

Charlie, the narrator, recalls an afternoon meeting as a boy with his father while transferring trains at Grand Central Station in New York City. The boy is innocent and naive and expects his meeting with his father to be an opportunity to reconnect. When he abruptly leaves his father, we assume he now understands why his mother divorced his father, and he also ceases contact with the man. He no longer sees him as a fatherly figure.

Setting

Grand Central Station is where the father and son meet, and they go to four separate restaurants and a newspaper stand. The setting of the train station builds a motif of the boy going in a new direction in his life after coming to a new understanding of his father.

References

1. Cheever, John. Reunion. Literature: A Pocket Anthology. Fourth Edition. Edited by R. S. Gwynn. New York: Penguin, 2009.