Summary Of My Little Bit Of Country By Susan Cheever

A life in the city versus a life in the country is possibly one of the most debated life style choices in modern days. The excitement and loudness of the city attract the same kind of people, who enjoy to let the younger side of themselves break loose, whereas the calm and sturdiness of the country, and more specifically the suburbs, speak to the people who seek the family dream and want more than a fleeting life in the fast lane. But on the subject of family and children, is our comfort in city or country dependent on our fear of change and the feeling of familiarity from the place we grew up? Because you can bash the other idea as much as you want, but I can guarantee you, there is someone out there who loves it precisely because of those

In the text, Cheever touches on the subject of her experience of Central Park compared to her life in the suburbs. As the text is written in a first person narrator as a series of memories which collide in a final present understanding of Cheever’s own relationship to Central Park, we learn a lot about Cheever. She is first and foremost a lover of the big city life. It is not said when her family moved to the country, but we know that up until that point she had lived in New York City and grown up with Central Park: “My earliest memories are of summer mornings in Central Park” (l. 1-2). And although Cheever loves the city her parents thought otherwise and at some point in Cheever’s life they moved to the country. Cheever expresses multiple times that she felt like an outcast in her family on this particular subject: “I too often felt (…) that I had come from another exotic foreign place to live with my disappointingly ordinary family” (l. 27-30), “I was the lone dissenter. I did not want to go.” (l. 90). To no one’s surprise, she moved back to New York City when she was old enough, and made a point out of raising her own children in the

284-287) and “I long for the safety of the city, where nature is so beautifully and spectacularly kept on a leash” (l. 295-298). The underlying message of this essay lies in these few lines. For the author explicitly explains her love for Central Park with the feeling that it is her “bit of country” in the city, and the spectacular nature confined in the park cannot be matched anywhere in the suburbs. But as seen in the lines 295-298, the reason for her dislike of the country’s nature might lie in the fact it is not controlled, and you cannot be sure of what can happen, whereas in Central Park the zoo-animals are confined and everything is made sure to be safe. And that lack of certainty might be what is scaring her