The Blue-Winged Teal by Wallace Stegner
"The Blue-Winged Teal" is a short story by Wallace Stegner that explores themes of grief, connection, and personal growth through the experiences of a young man named Henry Lederer. Returning to his hometown to care for his dying mother, Henry grapples with feelings of alienation as he perceives a stark contrast between his college life and the ordinary existence of his father and their community. The story unfolds against a backdrop of American realism, capturing the complexities of familial relationships and the nuances of human emotion.
As Henry confronts his father's behavior following his mother's death, he struggles with disdain for his father's lowbrow tastes and finds himself yearning to escape back to his previous life. However, a pivotal moment occurs during a duck hunting excursion when Henry brings home a blue-winged teal. This moment catalyzes an epiphany, leading him to understand that his father's grief parallels his own, albeit expressed differently. Through this realization, Henry comes to appreciate the shared human experience of sorrow and suffering, ultimately transforming his perspective on life and his relationship with his father. The narrative underscores the journey from self-centeredness to a broader understanding of empathy and connection within the human experience.
The Blue-Winged Teal by Wallace Stegner
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1955 (collected in Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner, 1990)
Type of work: Short story
The Work
Stegner is an acknowledged master of both the novel and short-story forms, and “The Blue-Winged Teal” is often cited as one of his best stories. “The Blue-Winged Teal” fits squarely into the tradition of American realism. It deals with ordinary events among ordinary people.
A young man named Henry Lederer who has returned home from college to be at his dying mother’s bedside now feels out of place in his hometown. College has taught him to value culture and intellectual achievement; his father’s ignorant cronies seem gross and absurd. Henry wants to get back to his college environment, but he has no money and is forced to share his father’s hotel room and eat at his father’s dingy, smelly poolroom. He finds that he despises his father for his lowbrow tastes and immoral behavior. His mother had kept his father on a higher plane, but as soon as his mother dies, his father returns to his old habits. After Henry’s mother has been dead for only six weeks, his father is already consorting with loose women; he comes home smelling of cheap perfume.
Henry goes duck hunting and returns with nine ducks of assorted species. Later, one of his father’s cronies cooks the ducks for a special feast. One of the ducks is a blue-winged teal; its beauty moves his father to tears, because he remembers how Henry’s mother loved those birds.
Henry Lederer experiences an epiphany. He suddenly realizes that his father shares his grief but has a different way of expressing it. Perhaps more important, he realizes that his feelings are not unique but are shared by the whole human race. He realizes that he is young and self-centered; he also realizes that he is surrounded with quiet human suffering that is not often expressed. He becomes a different man as a result of this epiphany; its effect is to release him from psychological captivity in his hometown and to allow him to return to college, where he can pursue his career.
Bibliography
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Benson, Jackson, J., ed. Down by the Lemonade Springs: Essays on Wallace Stegner. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2001.
Colberg, Nancy. Wallace Stegner: A Descriptive Bibliography. Lewiston, Idaho: Confluence Press, 1990.
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Foote, Mary Hallock. A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West: The Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote. Edited by Rodman W. Paul. San Marino, Calif.: The Huntington Library, 1972.
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Nelson, Nancy Owne. “Land Lessons in an ’Unhistoried’ West: Wallace Stegner’s California.” In San Francisco in Fiction: Essays in a Regional Literature, edited by David Fine and Paul Skenazy. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.
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