Sunday Dinner in Brooklyn by Anatole Broyard
"Sunday Dinner in Brooklyn" by Anatole Broyard explores the experiences of a young man named Paul as he travels from his Greenwich Village home to his parents' residence in Brooklyn for dinner. This journey serves as a lens through which Paul reflects on the diverse array of people he encounters, portraying the vibrant and eclectic community of Brooklyn. The narrative highlights the stark contrast between the bustling subway environment, where passengers maintain a peculiar sense of camaraderie despite their silence, and the more subdued atmosphere of his parents' home, emblematic of middle-class values and familial expectations.
As Paul arrives, he is welcomed as a cherished son, yet the dinner reveals deeper familial tensions. His parents' eagerness to cater to his needs inadvertently underscores their own suppressed desires, creating an atmosphere that heightens Paul's anxieties rather than alleviating them. The story culminates in a poignant moment between Paul and his father at the subway station, illustrating the complex emotional ties and unspoken sadness that linger in their relationship. Through vivid imagery and social commentary, Broyard's narrative invites readers to reflect on themes of identity, belonging, and the interplay between individual aspirations and familial obligations.
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Sunday Dinner in Brooklyn by Anatole Broyard
First published: 1968
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of work: 1954
Locale: Brooklyn
Principal Characters:
Paul , the narrator and protagonistHis mother His father
The Story
A young man named Paul, who is apparently in his twenties, travels from his Greenwich Village apartment to his parents' Brooklyn home for Sunday dinner. As he walks toward a subway station, he glimpses the colorful characters who populate his path and draws vivid correlations among them, the local landmarks, and the associations they inspire in him. Among an almost circuslike array of people, the reader sees "the Italians . . . all outside on stoops and chairs or standing along the curb in their Sunday clothes . . . mothers with their hair pulled back and their hands folded in their laps . . . like Neanderthal madonnas . . . [and] girls [with] long pegged skirts which made their feet move incredibly fast."
The subway itself is an exotic realm. Paul states, "I took a long breath like a deep-sea diver and went reluctantly underground." In the subway train the passengers ignore one another, yet exhibit an uncanny attunement to one another's movements as they silently exchange seats in an undulating, almost somnambulistic underground ballet.
The scene surrounding Paul's arrival in Brooklyn proves that he has transported himself to still another world. The borough's empty streets remind him that in stable, middle-class Brooklyn, everyone conforms by eating dinner at the same hour. Paul walks to his parents' house where they greet him as a prodigal son. His mother and father strive to please him by providing him every comfort and by filling him with the food they hope will sustain him. In their eagerness to provide a perfect Sunday evening, Paul's parents revise and repress their own beliefs and desires, a fact that Paul understands, and a truth that ironically increases, rather than decreases, his anxieties.
Following dinner and conversation, Paul's father accompanies him back to the subway station. As the father starts to descend the subway steps, Paul stops him, telling him to remain where he is so as not to overexert himself or to breathe in the station's polluted fumes. Paul's father protests, but finally acquiesces, and as the disaffected son disappears down the underground stairs, he feels his father's sadness.