The overall tone of both stories is one of quiet desperation, as each main character embarks on a physical and somewhat metaphysical journey. Each short story shares many similarities with the others in that each main character is trying to find the answer to something that is either obvious to them or to the world around them. Still, they are unable to put the pieces together.
The propulsion of physical movement allows the tension to be heightened because all journeys must end. If there’s no correct response to “the Big Thing” that each story hints at through the course of the main characters’ journeys, there’s a sense of introspective questions that do not require immediate answers.
The narrator of Rilke’s piece begins a walk because a common issues they’ve put up with put them out of their home:
“My stove began to smoke again and I had to go out, is really no misfortune.”
There’s no assumption made about the narrator’s gender because the story is told from a first-person point of view and remains unidentified as male, female, or any other gender. Eventually, a doctor asks if he has slept well.
As with many first-person narratives, the narrator of “Wrecked Houses” does not reveal much about their likability or dislikability. There’s almost no room to be opinionated because whoever takes this story on becomes the narrator.
In Cheever’s short story, we follow a married father named Ned Merrill as he swims the Lucinda River home, named after his loving wife. The river is comprised of the swimming pools that lie between his neighbors’ houses and his own. The narrative presents a limited omniscient point of view that feels immersive. For example, we’re meant to imagine Ned as:
“A slender man – he seemed to have the especial slenderness of youth – and while he was far from young he had slid down his banister that morning and given the bronze backside of Aphrodite on the hall table a smack, as he jogged towards the smell of coffee in his dining room.”
Although he is physically moving from place to place and interacting with the pools, the pace is slower, mimicking the act of a leisurely swim.
In Rilke’s piece, the narrator is an unbiased reporter of their present state. The little dialogue on the page is clinical, perfunctory, and almost journalistic. For example, the narrator shares that:
“They wanted to try electric treatment.”
The narrator implies no emotional reaction to a burdensome medical procedure. The way a first-person narrator interacts with characters is often biased, as these interactions are experienced through the narrator’s perspective, and no one is truly trustworthy when sharing a story.
Moreover, there’s something seriously wrong with Ned, further highlighting the lack of ironic distance. Ned has short, emotionless conversations with the neighbors, such as Mrs. Graham, who says,
“What a marvelous surprise. I’ve been trying to get you on the phone all morning. Here, let me get you a drink.”
The narrator of Wrecked Houses is plopped in the middle of something important. He mentions the smell of the stove and the movement of the people as they go by. He makes it clear that he does not own his own home, as he is liable to misrepresent those who do.
Meanwhile, the details of his financial state are in direct opposition to The Swimmer, who assumes familiarity with Ned’s neighbors, who are the type of people known collectively by their family names, or offhand details such as:
“The leader of the Audubon group is suffering from a terrible hangover.”
Despite being financial opposites, the two main characters evoke a compelling sympathy that transcends their differences. Their lives are intricately governed by the relentless pursuit and influence of money, creating a universal scenario that resonates with anyone who has ever grappled with the complexities of wealth and security.
The strength of Cheever’s piece lies in his interactions with various characters, but he fails to process the conversations he has with them. For example, when he visits with the Hallorans, they tell him:
“We’ve been terribly sorry to hear about all your misfortunes, Neddy.”
Ned does not understand why they would make such a comment.
“My misfortunes? I don’t know what you mean.”
The lack of distance clarifies a layer of understanding that Ned is either choosing to ignore or be unaware of.
Rilke’s piece, while not devoid of a vicious undercurrent, employs a unique narrative technique. Unlike conventional narratives, it doesn’t rely on a dialogue between the narrator and another character to maintain tension. Instead, the conversation creates a meta-experience where the reader steps into the narrator’s consciousness.
The setting for Rilke’s piece is in France, which is given in the details of the presence of the Louvre, the French being spoken by the cauliflower vendor, and the fact that it takes place during carnival, which is before Lent on the Catholic calendar, placing it during the earlier part of the year.
Cheever’s piece tells us from the very first sentence that it is a midsummer Sunday. However, there are details, such as the mention of the smell of:
“Chrysanthemums or marigolds – some stubborn autumnal fragrances”
or that the water in some of the pools is colder than it should be in summer, or that one neighbor’s pool has been drained, which gives clues to the fact that Ned’s odyssey takes place over a matter of months, not a day.
Cheever builds the scenes of the pools owned by the Grahams, the Hammers, the Lears, the Howlands, the Crosscups, the Bunkers, the Levys, the Welchers, the Hallorans, the Sachses, the Biswangers, Shirley Adams, the Gilmartins and the Clydes. Using these pools also propels the story forward because, as Ned mentally maps out which pools he will use to get home to Bullet Park, the narrative progresses with each visit to the pool of the named families. But the length of time is meant to be questioned when the narrator says:
“Beyond the hedge he pulled on his trunks and fastened them. They were loose and he wondered if, during the space of an afternoon, he could have lost some weight.”
The abstractness of Rilke’s piece comes before the French passage because the narrator is conscious enough of what is happening that he wants to write it down, knowing it will outlive him, knowing that:
“Every word is sustained and has time to die away.”
The narrator can provide us with a lot of visceral details when he diverges from the almost stream-of-consciousness style. A shift in consciousness is happening or about to take place, without losing the tension of the physical journey. The narrator is mentally ill and in need of electroshock treatment, bringing a sense of hopelessness. For example, the visceral location of the hospital is punctuated by the observation that:
“The air was foul, heavy, impregnated with clothes and breaths.”
The pacing of Rilke’s story unfolds in real time when the narrator states that:
“I had to be at Salpêtrière at one o’clock… I looked at the clock; it was five minutes to one… I looked at the clock; I had been pacing up and down for an hour.”
There is a sense of urgency because time is a constant that thrusts forward. Only the narrator of Wrecked Houses would give us a play-by-play of his day in this way.
This is in opposition to Ned, who has no sense of time at all when the narrator mentions that:
“The day was lovely, and that he lives in a world so generously supplied with water seemed like a clemency, a beneficence.”
But reality doesn’t quite match up to what he wanted to see, as he came upon the Lindleys’ riding ring, where:
“He was surprised to find it overgrown with grass and all the jumps dismantled.”
Considering the type of upper-class neighborhood he lives in, this suggests that no one of their status would leave their riding ring unkempt, especially during the summer when the weather is perfect for horseback riding.
The climax of Cheever’s story occurs when the narrator states that Ned
“could not understand the rudeness of the caterer’s barkeep or the rudeness of a mistress who had come to him on her knees and showered his trousers with tears.”
Ned’s mental disconnect is either starting to come together or unravel, depending on how one interprets it. His interactions with the neighbors were not coincidental; they were essential for him to reach this realization. He needed these conversations.
But the climax of Rilke’s story is when the narrator makes mention of
“That which had struck into me my first, profound terror, when as a child I lay ill with fever: the Big Thing.”
In Rilke’s time, dying from a fever was a common thing. The Big Thing remains a constant reminder of the narrator’s mortality, even in his adult years.
Each story ends abruptly yet implies that time soldiers on. For example, the last line of Rilke’s piece is:
“I did not know in what city I was or whether I had a lodging somewhere here or what I must do in order not to have to go on walking.”
Meanwhile, Ned’s journey of the physical and psychological is complete, and he must be left alone in his grief. The last line of Cheever’s story is:
“He shouted, pounded on the door, tried to force it with his shoulder, and then, looking in at the windows, saw the place was empty.”
Love, peace, & adobo grease,
