Understanding of Family in The Reunion and This Be The Verse Novels

We all have our own meaning of the word family. In fact the definition of family can be defined as “a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household.” If you were to sit down and think of the words that symbolizes family the list would go on and on. Some words include love, support, compassion, wisdom and even safe. Would you ever consider putting words that aren’t so on the happy side? Sarah Dessen once said, “Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.” What if the evolving made the bright side of family turn to dark? The Reunion by John Cheever and This Be the Verse by Philip Larkin both depict an event or advice that makes the word family is on the dark side. Each piece of literature uses it language to narrate why the word dysfunctional describes their symbolism of family.

With both pieces of literature having the same symbolism each piece has it differences that make each pieces its own work. The Reunion by John Cheever is a short story about a son who meets up with his father again. The feelings the son has for the father changes from the beginning of the story to the end. Cheever uses a lot of detail in his sentences to make imagery pop out so the reader can imagine being in the narrators shoes. The narrator is Charlie who recalls the encounter with his father. Charlie announces how he hasn’t seen his father in three years since his mother divorced him. Once he saw his father he was excited. “He was a big, good-looking man, and I was terribly happy to see him again” (Cheever 254). The setting takes place in Grand Central Station, New York in the Sixties. The plot of the story is that Charlie and his father spend the short time they have together going restaurant to restaurant and Charlie notices his father is a drunk. Everywhere they went the father would yell and be rude. “You don’t desire our patronage. Is that it? Well the hell with you.Vada all inferno, Lets go Charlie” (Chever256).Charlie looked up to his father and now he doesn’t. The tone the narrator is regretful/ sorrow. The last line of the poem ends with “I went down the stairs and got on my train, and that was the last time I saw my father. That tells us that the narrator regrets meeting his father again because he didn’t like how his father acted. Dysfunctional describes the relationship because if a person was going to be reunited with someone they haven’t seen in a while you would think they be on their best behavior. Also, the father chooses alcohol over time with his son. The theme of this short story is that we can’t pick our family. This story tells us that you can’t help how family acts that we can simply learn to live with it or walk away.

Mitch Albom once said, “All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.” This Be the Verse by Philip Larkin is a poem with three stanzas that have alternating rhyming scheme. The poem has a tone of aggression/disappointment towards parents. He is advising that we don’t have kids because if we do they will be messed up. According to Alison Macbezn, “…it’s a poem which refers to a fundamental truth that many recognize but have never put into words.”(helium.com). Mr.Larkin uses a strong word choice in his poem. He starts off by saying “They fuck you up, your mum and dad”(283). That grabs the reader’s full attention to figure out how they mess us up. He uses you and the f-word repeatedly in this poem. He does that to indicate that no matter how we live out life we are messed up because we got our parents faults. In the poem Larkin adds some imagery when he describes how parents are between sweet and strict on their children “Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throat” (Larkin 283). The old-style and hats symbolizes our ancestors. Mr.Larkin states on line ten and eleven “Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf”(283). Alison Macbezn feels that those two lines indicate the depths of despair to which humankind may be dragged if the cycle is continued (Helium.com).The theme of the poem is to not have kids because if you do they will only be messed up just like you.

With both pieces of literature having to different meanings they both share similarities. Both two pieces both come from a man’s point of view. The families are both torn apart; meaning that an event happened to make them right a story about how the positive terms of family turned to dark terms. In the Reunion it was the fathers dunking habit that made his son walk away from him and in This Be the Verse, the narrator says that you (the child) are messed up due to your parent’s faults. Both pieces share a good amount of literary elements that help us break down the poem into more then it seems. The narrators both used great words choices to have the reader picture what the narrator is saying. Both authors are trying to say that it is the parents who reflect the children actions.

They say that family is thicker than blood, but what if the blood isn’t so think? What if the importance of the term “family” isn’t as positive to you as for others? This so called term “family” is nothing but crazy or dysfunctional to you because an event happened to make it that way. Rick Riordan stated, “Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we're related for better or for worse...and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum.”