The Blue-Winged Teal (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Wallace Stegner
- First Published: 1955
- Type of Work: Short story
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: Husbands, United States or Americans, Mothers, Parents and children, Schools or school life, Fathers, Death or dying, Bereavement or grief, Birds, Visions, epiphanies, or revelations, Ducks
Stegner is an acknowledged master of both the novel and short-story forms, and “The Blue-Winged Teal” is often cited as one of his best stories. “The Blue-Winged Teal” fits squarely into the tradition of American realism. It deals with ordinary events among ordinary people.
A young man named Henry Lederer who has returned home from college to be at his dying mother's bedside now feels out of place in his hometown. College has taught him to value culture and intellectual achievement; his father's ignorant cronies seem gross and absurd. Henry wants to get back to his...
[The entire page is 564 words long]
