Darly Darly is Pace’s sixty-eight-year-old ranch hand. Like Hattie, he comes from the East Coast. Darly inadvertently causes Hattie to break her arm, but he never apologizes for his mistake. Throughout the story, he and Hattie are seen as behaving antagonistically toward each other, each annoyed by the others’ tacit accusations of being a drunk….
Tag: The United States of America
Leaving the Yellow House – Summary
As the story opens, seventy-two-year-old Hattie has lived in the old yellow house in the practically deserted community of Sego Desert Lake, Utah, for years. Born and bred on the East Coast, Hattie came out West after a failed marriage to a Philadelphia blueblood. She used to have a lover named Wicks. He was a…
Goodbye, Columbus – Analysis
”Goodbye, Columbus” is a coming-of-age story, in which the twenty-three-year-old protagonist, Neil Klugman, grapples with his sense of self, particularly in relation to his Jewish identity. The event that that precipitates this identity crisis is meeting Brenda Patimkin, with whom he has a relationship over the course of a summer. While Brenda and Neil are…
Goodbye, Columbus – Setting
Jewish Holidays Toward the end of the story, Neil and Brenda agree to spend the weekend of the Jewish holidays together. Specifically, it is during the Jewish High Holy Day of Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish New Year and usually occurs in mid to late September. As the end of summer had indicated the…
Goodbye, Columbus – Literary Devices
Point of View and Narration This story is narrated from the first person restricted point of view. Neil Klugman is both the narrator and the protagonist and everything is portrayed from his perspective. This is effective because this is a story about identity and self-discovery; what is important is how Neil perceives himself and his…
Goodbye, Columbus – Themes
Love, Sex and Relationships The story centers around the development of Neil’s relationship with Brenda, from their first meeting to their final breakup. The first person narration portrays the relationship from Neil’s perspective, highlighting the class differences between the two of them. A significant element of their relationship is their sexual encounters, first in her…
Goodbye, Columbus – Characters
Carlota Carlotta is the Patimkin’s maid. That the Patimkins have a maid is an indication of their wealth. Harriet Ehrlich Harriet Ehrlich is the fiancee of Brenda’s brother Ron. Harriet arrives at the Patimkin household several days before the wedding. Neil describes her as ”a young lady singularly unconscious of a motive in others or…
Goodbye, Columbus – Summary
Neil Klugman is twenty-three and Jewish. He works at a public library and lives with his Aunt Gladys and Uncle Max, as his parents have moved to Arizona because of their asthma. Neil first meets Brenda Patimkin, also Jewish, a student at Radcliffe College in Boston, Massachusetts, at a country club swimming pool, to which…
The Beginning of Homewood – Analysis
Like William Faulkner does in his novels and stories set in the fictional world of Yoknapatawpha, Wideman creates a complex landscape in “The Beginning of Homewood” that allows him to enmesh his characters in webs of moral ambiguities. The community of Homewood founded by runaway slave Sybela Owens, the narrator’s great-great-great-grandmother, is certainly not an…
The Beginning of Homewood – Summary
The story opens as the narrator tries to explain how the story came into being. It began, he says, as a letter to his brother, which he ”began writing on a Greek island two years ago, but never finished, never sent.” Addressing his absent brother, he then proceeds to tell “the story that came before…