My little Bit of Country’’ is an essay, written by Susan Cheever, about Central Park. Susan Cheever acts as the narrator, telling parts of her life story, from her childhood days until her present, from her point-of-view. The story takes place in the urban Manhattan, putting the New York City life in perspective, of a life in the suburbs.
The story begins with the protagonists’ first memory of summer mornings in Central Park with her father, after his return from fighting in World War II, and since the story progresses chronologically, it can be presumed that the story’s timeline begins in the 1940s, and as earlier mentioned, ends in the narrators present. While living in New York in her earliest years, Susan Cheever is an only child, living in a two-bedroom apartment near the Queensborough Bridge.
In attempt to explain the greatness of New York she writes on page 8, line 36: ‘’The city in those years just after the war was a romantic place, a place of dreams and the beginnings of prosperity for people like my young parents’’ showing that already at a young age she felt a platonic love for the city in which she lived. She got infatuated by the idea of New York at such a young age, that she seemed to have created an idea, of which being that nothing could compare to New York.
With these ideals she moved to the suburbs with her parents, where she was living her parents’ dream of the white picket-fenced house, gaining a younger brother and a dog, in Westchester. Already knowing what she thought was best, she puts the two different ways of living in perspective through personal experience: Page 2, line 110: ‘’Why would I want to swim in someone’s muddy pond crawling with leeches when I could perch myself on a marble basin and cool myself with splashing clear water, topping it off with a lemonade from the cart on fifth Avenue?
The Essay on “This is the story of a young man/woman who was able to escape from a difficult past to make a success of…”
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’’ Page 2, line 115: ‘’Why would I want to scrape around the rough, dangerous ice of a country lake when I could glide around the smooth ice at the Whollman Rink and pause for a hot chocolate when my toes and fingers got too cold? ’’ Page 3, line 172: ‘’Country children may have had ponies, but my kids had the delicious Carousel with its honky-tonk music and bright stallions. ’’ Page 3, line 77: ‘’Suburban children had fancy art classes; my children had the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
’’ The way she wrote the essay clearly puts her in favor of the city life. How she describes how amazing the city is with all its opportunities, whereas the country is more limited. How she makes the city out to be almost majestic and magical in comparison to the suburbs, by using words like marble basin, splashing clear water, delicious carousel and bright stallion about the city, while words like muddy, rough and dangerous to describe the suburbs.
She quotes an author named Andy Warhol about how you can find a little piece of country in the city, but no city in the country. Central Park is her country, her refuge from the city. She describes it to be beautiful but tame, whereas she explains how she is afraid of the wild nature that lies on the other side of the suburban house walls.
