Walter Briggs (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Updike
- First Published: 1959
- Type of Plot: Domestic realism
- Time of Work: The late 1950's
- Setting: The Boston area
- Principal Characters: Jack, Clare, Jo, Walter Briggs
- Genres: Short fiction, Domestic realism
- Subjects: Memory, Marriage, Emotions, Jealousy, envy, or resentment
- Locales: Boston, MA
The Story
Driving home from Boston (a fifty-minute trip), Jack and his wife, Clare, entertain their daughter Jo with a version of a familiar nursery rhyme while their infant son sleeps. After Jo also falls asleep, they talk about the people they have met at a party, which leads into an extended memory game in which they try to remember names and details about people they had known when, newly married, they had worked together at a YMCA family camp in New Hampshire for a summer five years before. Their conversation, mostly commonplace and trivial, reveals hidden conflicts. One...
[The entire page is 1658 words long]
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