Thursday, April 22, 2010
Separating
The short story, by John Updike, "Separating" is a story that occurs in regular day life for many families. The Maple family is starting to see how their parents react to each other as they age. The parents, seem to be going throught the mid-life crisis phase. Richard the father is thought to be seeing another woman and is wanting a separation from his wife. Richard decides not to face his four kids in telling them of the separation. Instead he has his wife tell the kids, to make out as she is the bad guy. At the reaction from the kids, the reader assumes that, the kids have already been expecting the separation. Richard's remark to his son Richard Jr. "Life is to short to miserable." about his bad year at school. It gives the reader an understanding that Richard is unhappy with his life and marriage, so he wants to make a change in his life. In some ways the main problem of the Maple family in the story is that Richard is trying to be young again and does not want any ties or strings to be holding him back.
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I believe that this story shows the hard ships that families are going through more and more during our time. This is a very popular scenario lately. Divorce and separation of families is becoming more and more common. One of the main reasons that this occurs is for the exact reason that Allie stated in her blog. One of the spouses either gets bored, or doesn’t want to be tied down for one reason or another. In my opinion this is horrible, and it is even worse for the children going through it whether they are expecting it or not.
ReplyDeleteLike Allie said in the short story “Separating” the event of the two parents deciding to take a break but not rush into a divorce can happen to any family. The interesting part of the story to me though is the dad playing innocent causing his wife to seem like the bad person like Allie said. Since the kids were already suspicious of a break up it didn’t bother them much and nobody asked why which could have put the father in the spotlight. The ending was also great because that is when the father realize that he can’t remember why they are separating it’s like when to friends have a grudge and never talk again but they forget why they are mad at each other and they wind up losing a good friendship
ReplyDeleteI feel like this story is a perfect example of relationships in today’s society. People get married way too young. I agree with Cadet Gonzalez, someone in the relationship usually begins to be bored with his or her spouse. Before getting married they are all caught up in the moment and are ready to grow up, but when it really happens they start thinking about how they want to go out drinking with their friends. Then people start talking about children. Once they have children they start fighting and more because of stress and other things going on in their life. Which is not fair for the children to be around. Over all this story was realistic and easy to read.
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