My Little Bit of Country by Susan Cheever: Life in the City vs. Life in the Suburbs
My Little Bit of Country
Everyone is different, and everyone knows it for a fact. With that in mind it is still easy to put people in larger groups based on their ideals, dreams and way of life. For a very long time two groups have separated them from each other; city-people and country-folk
In the essay “My Little Bit of Country” (2012) Susan Cheever shares her thoughts on a life in the city versus a life in the suburbs. The story follows a chronological structure and starts with Cheever thinking back at the memories of her childhood in Central Park with her father. Susan Cheever compares herself with a yak from the Central Park Zoo, and it becomes clear to us how she sees herself very different from her family, being “disappointingly ordinary”. She stands therefore in opposition to her ordinary family; Cheever comes, as the yak, from an exotic foreign place and have accepted the terms in the big city, but her family wishes different, and, beside Cheever’s love for the big city and their small apartment, they end up moving to the suburb in New Jersey, with house, forest and other families who love the outdoors.
This is the first big contrast Susan Cheever deals with in her essay. The contrast between her desire for the big city and love for the nature in Central Park put against her parent’s love for the outdoors, and what others may call “real” nature. As an extension of this, Cheever sheds light on the contrast between the suburbs and the city, which function as the main focus and theme throughout the essay. Her fascination of the nature in Central Park and the relationship between man and nature is a topic very dear to her. She grew up near Central Park and have many of her better childhood memories linked with the big city park. It is here she separates herself from her parents. They have different ideas and dreams, including another child, a car and a house in the suburbs. But Susan Cheever loves her life in the city and pictures a life in the suburbs as
Everyone is different, and everyone knows it for a fact. With that in mind it is still easy to put people in larger groups based on their ideals, dreams and way of life. For a very long time two groups have separated them from each other; city-people and country-folk
In the essay “My Little Bit of Country” (2012) Susan Cheever shares her thoughts on a life in the city versus a life in the suburbs. The story follows a chronological structure and starts with Cheever thinking back at the memories of her childhood in Central Park with her father. Susan Cheever compares herself with a yak from the Central Park Zoo, and it becomes clear to us how she sees herself very different from her family, being “disappointingly ordinary”. She stands therefore in opposition to her ordinary family; Cheever comes, as the yak, from an exotic foreign place and have accepted the terms in the big city, but her family wishes different, and, beside Cheever’s love for the big city and their small apartment, they end up moving to the suburb in New Jersey, with house, forest and other families who love the outdoors.
This is the first big contrast Susan Cheever deals with in her essay. The contrast between her desire for the big city and love for the nature in Central Park put against her parent’s love for the outdoors, and what others may call “real” nature. As an extension of this, Cheever sheds light on the contrast between the suburbs and the city, which function as the main focus and theme throughout the essay. Her fascination of the nature in Central Park and the relationship between man and nature is a topic very dear to her. She grew up near Central Park and have many of her better childhood memories linked with the big city park. It is here she separates herself from her parents. They have different ideas and dreams, including another child, a car and a house in the suburbs. But Susan Cheever loves her life in the city and pictures a life in the suburbs as