Sunday In The Park.
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The clash of reasonable arguments and brute strength might be a relevant matter in the modern society. Especially if you don’t know exactly how to cope with violent behaviour. Is violence bad or is it just an expression of strength and being a masculine person?
In the short story “Sunday in the park” we are presented with the conflict between two men from different social classes. The story shows how different social backgrounds seem to make it impossible for the men to discuss even ridiculously small matters on which they don’t agree.
It also shows how hard it can be to judge what’s wrong or right.
The story takes place in a park, where a little family are enjoying a peaceful afternoon at the playground. When another boy throws sand at the little son, the mother tries to stop him, but she doesn’t succeed. The other boys father is just encouraging his son to continue. The conflict arises as the family father is asking the other man to be reasonable. At this point of the story we have already been introduced to the two different social classes.
The family father is highly educated, and spends his week as a teacher at the university. He’s a lean, pale man with a shy, apologetic smile, and he always uses a very polite and well-formulated language. But when it comes to confrontations with people, who use other modes of expression, he isn’t able to make himself clear. He’s actually kind of powerless, not only because of his physical weakness, but also because of his lack of adaptability. He doesn’t seem to know that reasonable arguments don’t have any effect on a person who’s just trying to provoke everybody.
The other man is big and impolite, and you clearly notice his stupidity and his need to provoke other people. He’s very fond of primitive expressions and of interrupting other people. His behaviour is generally very hostile, but he’s also very relaxed.
The power struggle between the two men naturally passes of on his terms. The big man is trying to provoke a physical fight, and the family father indirectly has to admit that he’s the weakest.
The family fathers wife is also the storyteller and she is suffused with mixed emotions. At first, when her husband becomes angry and rises, she feels tenderness for him, because he’s trying to handle a situation “so alien and distasteful for him” (l. 29 p. 98). But for the other man, this situation certainly isn’t whether alien or distasteful: he just wants a fight. In some way the wife wants to stop her husband from fighting, but then again “for some reason” (l. 38-39 p. 98) she doesn’t. But when the big man becomes more threatening, the family father realizes that he can’t win a physical fight and he awkwardly decides to leave. Consequently the situation turns out to be kind of humiliating for the small family. They are passing the big man, who’s sitting sprawling on the bench again, and the wife’s trying to walk “with all the dignity she could summon” (l. 6-7 s. 99). But there can’t be much dignity left at all, in fact they’re just running away, like the everlasting dog with the tail between its legs.
The wife has this strange feeling, as if this event has been more than an unpleasant incident:
“She felt dimly it had something to do with her and Morton, something acutely personal, familiar, and important.”