Pet Milk (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Stuart Dybek
- First Published: 1981
- Type of Plot: Psychological
- Time of Work: The mid-twentieth century
- Setting: Chicago
- Principal Characters: The narrator, Kate
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Tradition, Love or romance, Twentieth century, Restaurants, bars, taverns, or pubs, Manners or customs, Chicago, Poverty or poor people, Immigration or emigration, Trains, Generation gap, Illinois
- Locales: Chicago, IL
The Story
“Pet Milk” is told from the perspective of a young man as he recalls his youth in an ethnic neighborhood in Chicago and the course of his relationship with his girlfriend in the year after they graduated from college. The story begins with the narrator musing in midwinter about the patterns made by the addition of Pet evaporated milk to a cup of coffee. The swirls of the mixture lead through a series of associations to the thought that evaporated milk is an emblem of an earlier time in his life when a first-generation family had to find an adequate...
[The entire page is 1543 words long]
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