Assigned Film (watch before we meet on the Tues after Thanksgiving break): The Graduate (1967) (dir. Mike Nichols, running time 1 hour, 46 minutes) EUR ІКТІЛІЗагшаа (down, weraduate As of Nov 1, the entire film is available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hNbXHU084g is taken check ant EUW UITLE (I have also put a copy of the DVD on 2-hour, in-library reserve for this class; the library also has portable DVD drives you can use there Services if your laptop/tablet does not have a DVD drive) Main Characters: Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) Mr. and Mrs. Braddock Mr. and Mrs. Robinson Elaine Robinson Streaming you may already Subscribe to - another option would be to check SOCIAIO **STRONGLY RECOMMENDED: Watch with the subtitles/closed captioning on; this will help you to notice key dialogue** at homeak- Questions to think about as you watch the film #1 How can we relate specific aspects of the film to the short story we read by John Cheever before break? (“O Youth and Beauty!” CP 239-243) your local oublic librar over it might have a DVD Copy you can check out #2 How does the film depict Ben's parents and their “world” (upper-middle class suburbia)? For ex: Note the early scene of the party for Ben's graduation: --How does the "one word” of advice given to Ben by one of the party guests (Mr. McGuire) seem significant in this regard? --What is Ben's “problem” as the film opens? (Pay attention to the opening dialogue between Ben and his father.) #3 How does the film depict Mrs. Robinson? Does the film present any opportunities to sympathize with her (and if so, how/upon what basis)? #4 How does the film depict Ben as isolated/trapped/alienated from his surroundings? Pay attention to elements of “film language” such as: shot composition/framing; use of “point-of-view" shots; camera movement/camera distance; sound effects and use of music; editing, etc. For ex-note the opening sequence (before and during the opening credits) and recurring elements such as the fish tank in Ben's room, the Braddocks' swimming pool, etc. #5 What's the significance of the final sequence (beginning with Ben's rush to get to Elaine's wedding) What do you make of the final shots of Ben and Elaine on the back of the bus-what do you make of their expressions in these closing shots? What does this ending suggest about what their future might be, and why/how might this be significant in relation to the overall themes of the film as a whole? ( first published in 1953) O YOUTH AND BEAUTY! by John Cheever A (1912-1982) 218 par. 3 pp. 210 The Stories of John Cheever (Alfred A. Knopf, 1928) 239 T THE TAG END of nearly every long, large Saturday-night party in the suburb of Shady Hill, when almost everybody who was going to play golf or tennis in the morning had gone home hours ago and the ten or twelve people remaining seemed powerless to bring the evening to an end although the gin and whiskey were running low, and here and there a woman who was sitting out her husband would have begun to drink milk; when everybody had lost track of time, and the baby-sitters who were waiting at home for these diehards would have long since stretched out on the sofa and fallen into a deep sleep, to dream about cooking-contest prizes, ocean voyages, and romance; when the bellicose drunk, the crapshooter, the pianist, and the woman faced with the expira- tion of her hopes had all expressed themselves; when every proposal-to go to the Farquarsons for breakfast, to go swimming, to go and wake up the Townsends, to go here and go there-died as soon as it was made, then Trace Bearden would begin to chid Cash Bentley about his age and thinning hair. The chiding was preliminary to moving the living room furniture. Trace and Cash moved the tables and the chairs, the sofas and the fire screen, the woodbox and the footstool; and when they had finished, you wouldn't know the place. Then if the host had a revolver, he would be asked to produce it. Cash would take off his shoes and assume a start- ing crouch behind a sofa. Trace would fire the weapon out of an open window, and if you were new to the community and had not understood what the preparations were about, you would then realize that you were. watching a hurdle race. Over the sofa went Cash, over the tables, over the fire screen and the woodbox. It was not exactly a race, since Cash ran it alone, but it was extraordinary to see this man of forty surmount so many obstacles se gracefully. There was not a piece of furniture in Shady Hilf that Cash could not take in his stride. The race ended with cheers, and presently the party would break up. Cash was, of course, an old track star, but he was never aggressive or tiresome about his brilliant past. The college where he had youth had offered him a paying job on the alumni council, but he had refused it, realizing that that part of his life was ended. Cash and his wife, Louise, had two children, and they lived in a medium-cost ranch house on Alewives Lane. They belonged to the country club, although they could not afford it, but in the case of the Bentleys nobody ever pointed this out, and Cash was one of the best-liked men in Shady Hill. He was still slut he was careful about his weight and he walked to the train in the morning with a light and vigorous step that marked him as an athlete. His hair was thin, and there were mornings when his eyes looked bloodshot, but this did not detract much from a charming quality of stubborn youthfulness. In business Cash had suffered reverses and disappointments, and the Bentleys had many money worries. They were always late with their tax payments and their mortgage payments, and the drawer of the hall table was stuffed with unpaid bills; it was always touch and go with the Bentleys and the bank. Louise looked pretty enough on Saturday night, but her life was exacting and monotonous. In the pockets of her suits, coats, and dresses there were little wads and scraps of paper on which was written: "Oleomargarine, frozen spinach, Kleenex, dog bis- cuit, hamburger, pepper, lard ..." When she was still half awake in the morning she was putting on the water for coffee and diluting the frozen orange juice Then she would be wanted by the children. She would crawl under the bureau on her hands and knees to find a sock for Toby. She would lie flat on her belly and wiggle under the bed (getting dust up her nose) to find a shoe for Rachel. Then there were the housework, the laundry, and the cooking, as well as the demands of the children. There always seemed to be shoes to put on and shoes to take off, snowsuits to be zipped and unzipped, bottoms to be wiped, tears to be dried, and when the sun went down (she saw it set from the kitchen window) there was the supper to be cooked, the baths, the bedtime story, and the Lord's Prayer. With the sonorous words of the Our Father in a darkened room the children's day was over, but the day was far from over for Louise Bentley. There were the darning, the mending, and some iron- ing to do, and after sixteen years of housework she did not seem able to escape her chores even while she slept. Snowsuits, shoes, baths, and gro- ceries seemed to have permeked her subconscious. (Now and then she would speak in her sleep-so loudly that she woke her husband. "I can't afford veal cutlets," she said one night. Then she sighed uneasily and was quiet again.) By the standards of Shady Hill, the Bentleys were a happily married couple, but they had their ups and downs Cash could be very touchy at times. When he came home after a bad day at the office and found that Louise, for some good reason, had not started supper, he would be ugly. "Oh, for Christ sake!" The would say, and go into the kitchen par. I his spent Раг. Ч par. 2. pravity, but never left with any hard feelings, because she had been married for nineteen years herself and she knew that every union has its ups and downs. She didn't seem to leave any wiser, either; the next time the Bentleys quarreled, she would be just as intent as ever on get- ting Louise a job. But these quarrels and reunions, like the hurdle race, didn't seem to lose their interest through repetition.) and heat up some frozen food. He drank some whiskey to relax himself during this ordeal, but it never seemed to relax him, and he usually burned the bottom out of a pan, and when they sat down for supper the dining space would be full of smoke. It was only a question of time before they were plunged into a bitter quarrel("Louise would run up- stairs, throw herself onto the bed and sob) Cash would grab the whiskey bottle and dose himself. (These rows, in spite of the vigor with which Cash and Louise entered into them, were the source of a great deal of pain for both of them, Cash would sleep downstairs on the sofa, but sleep never repaired the damage, once the trouble had begun, and if they met in the morning, they would be at one another's throats in a second. Then Cash would leave for the train, and, as soon as the chil- dren had been taken to nursery school, Louise would put on her coat and cross the grass to the Beardens' house. She would cry into a cup of warmed-up coffee and tell Lucy Bearden her troubles. What was the meaning of marriage? What was the meaning of love? Lucy always suggested that Louise get a job. It would give her emotional and finan- cial independence, and that. Lucy said, was what she needed. The next night, things would get worse. Cash would not come home for dinner at all, but would stumble in at about eleven, and the whole sordid wrangle would be repeated, with Louise going to bed in tears upstairs and Cash again stretching out on the living-room sofa. After a few days and nights of this, Louise would decide that she was at the end of her rope. She would decide to go and stay with her married sister in Mamaroneck. She usually chose a Saturday, when Cash would be at home, for her departure. She would pack a suit- get her War Bonds from the desk. Then she would take a bath and put on her best slip. Cash, passing the bedroom door, would see her. Her slip was transparent, and suddenly he was all repentance, tenderness, charm, wisdom, and love. "Oh, my darling!” he would groan, and when they went downstairs to get a bite to eat about an hour later, they would be sighing and making cow eyes at one another; they would be the happiest married couple in the whole eastern United States. It was with the good usually at about this time that Lucy Bearden turned news that she had found a job for Louise. Lucy would ring the doorbell, and Cash, wearing a bathrobe, would let her in. She would be brief with poor Cash, naturally, and hurry into the dining room to tell good news. "Well, that's very nice of you to have looked," Louise would say wanly, “but I don't think that I want a job any more. I don't think that Cash wants me to work, do you, sweetheart?” Then she would turn her big dark eyes on Cash, and you could practically smell smoke. Lucy would excuse herself hurriedly from this scene of de- 240 5 ON A SATURDAY NIGHT in the spring, the Farquarsons gave the Bentleys an anniversary party. It was their seventeenth anniversary. Saturday afternoon, Louise Bentley put herself through preparations nearly as arduous as the Monday wash. She rested for an hour, by the clock, with her feet high in the air, her chin in a sling, and her eyes bathed in some astringent solution. The clay packs, the too tight girdle, and the plucking and curling and painting that went on were all aimed at rejuvenation. Feeling in the end that she had not been entirely suc- cessful, she tied a piece of veiling over her eyes--but she was a lovely 6 woman, and all the cosmetics that she had struggled with seemed, like her veil, to be drawn transparently over a face where mature beauty and a capacity for wit and passion were undisguisable. The Farquarsons party was nifty, and the Bentleys had a wonderful time. The only per- son who drank too much was Trace Bearden. Late in the party, he began to chide Cash about his thinning hair and Cash good-naturedly began to move the furniture around. Harry Farquarson had a pistol, and Trace went out onto the terrace to fire it up at the sky. Over the sofa went Cash, over the end table, over the arms of the wing chair and the fire screen. It was a piece of carving on a chest that brought him down, and down he came like a ton of bricks. Louise screamed and ran to where he lay. He had cut a gash in his forehead, and someone made a bandage to stop the flow of blood. When he tried to get up, he stumbled and fell again, and his face turned a terrible green. Harry telephoned Dr. Parminter, Dr. Hopewell, Dr. Altman, and Dr. Barnstable, but it was two in the morning and none of 7 them answered. Finally, a Dr. Yerkes-a total stranger-agreed to come. Yerkes was a young man-he did not seem old enough to be a doctor- and he looked around at the disordered room and the anxious company as if there was something weird about the scene. He got off wrong foot with Cash. "What seems to be the matter, old-timer?" he tette Cash's leg was broken. The doctor put a splint on it, and Harry and Trace carried the injured man out to the doctor's car. Louise fol 8 lowed them in her own car to the hospital, where Cash was bedded case and 7 up Louise the on the asked. PA O YOUTH AND BEAUTY! g 8. down in a ward. The doctor gave Cash a sedative, and Louise kissed him and drove home in the dawn. When Louise asked him what was the matter, he only murmured, "Nothing, nothing, nothing," and poured himself some bourbon. May and June passed, and then the first part of July, without his showing any improvement 12 ន 9 cash was in the hospital for two weeks, and when he came home he walked with a crutch and his broken leg was in a heavy cast. It was another ten days before he could limp to the morning train. "I won't be able to run the hurdle race any more, sweetheart," he told Louise sadly. She said that it didn't matter, but while it didn't matter to her, it seemed to matter to Cash. He had best weight in the hospital. His spirits were low. He seemed discontainer bople did not himself under- stand what had happened. He, or everything around him, seemed subtly to have changed for the worse. Even his senses seemed to con- spire to damage the ingenuous world that he had enjoyed for so many years. He went into the kitchen late one night to make himself a sand- wich, and when he opened the icebox door he noticed a rank smell. He dumped the spoiled meat into the garbagen but the smell clung to his nostrils. A few days later he was in the atti Looking for his varsity sweater. There were no windows in the attic and his flashlight was dim. Kneeling on the floor to unlock a trunk, he broke a spider web with his lips. The frail web covered his mouth as if a hand had been put over it. He wiped it impatiently, but also with the feeling of having been gagged. A few nights later, he was walking down a New York side street in the rain and saw an old whore standing in a doorway. She was so sluttish and ugly that she looked like a cartoon of Death, but before he could appraise her-the instant his eyes cook an impression of her crooked figure-his lips swelled, his breathing quickened, and he ex- perienced all the other symptoms of erotic excitement. A few nights later, while he was reading Time in the living room, he noticed that the faded roses Louise had brought in from the garden smelled more of earth than of anything else. It was a putrid, compelling smell. He dropped the roses into a wastebasket, but not before they had reminded him of the spoiled meat, the whore, and the spider web. He had started going to parties again, but without the hurdle race to run, the parties of his friends and neighbors seemed to him inter- minable and stale. He listened to their dirty jokes with an irritability that was hard for him to conceal. Even their countenances discouraged him, and, slumped in a chair, he would regard their skin and their teeth narrowly, as if he were himself a much younger man. The brunt of his irritability fell on Louise, and it seemed to her pre- that Cash, in losing the hurdle race, had lost the thing that had served his equilibrium. He was rude to his friends when they stopped in for a drink. He was rude and gloomy when he and Louise went out. THEN IT is a summer night, a wonderful summer night. The pas- sengers on the eight-fifteen see Shady Hill-if they notice it at all-in a bath of placid golden light. The noise of the train is muffled in the heavy foliage, and the long car windows look like a string of lighted aquarium tanks before they ficker out of sight. Up on the hill, the ladies say to one another, "Smell the grass! Smell the trees!" The Far- quarsons are giving another party, and Harry has hung a sign, WHISKEY GULCH, from the rose arbor, and is wearing a chef's white hat and an apron. His guests are still drinking, and the smoke from his meat fire rises, on this windless evening, straight up into the trees. In the clubhouse on the hill, the first of the formal dances for the young people begins around nine. On Alewives Lane sprinklers continue to play after dark. You can smell the water. The air seems as fragrant as it is dark-it is a delicious element to walk through-and most of the windows on Alewives Lane are open to it. You can see Mr. and Mrs. Bearden, as you pass, looking at their television. Joe Lockwood, the young lawyer who lives on the corner, is practicing a speech to the jury before his wife. "I intend to show you," he says, “that a man of probity, 13 a man whose reputation for honesty and reliability He waves his bare arms as he speaks. His wife goes on knitting. Mrs. Carver-Harry Farquarson's mother-in-law-glances up at the sky and asks, "Where did all the stars come from?” She is old and foolish, and yet she is right: Last night's stars seem to have drawn to themselves a new range of galaxies, and the night sky is not dark at all, except where there is a tear in the membrane of light. In the unsold house lots near the track a hermit thrush is singing. The Bentleys are at home. Poor Cash has been so rude and gloomy that the Farquarsons have not asked him to their party. He sits on the sofa beside Louise, who is sewing elastic into the children's underpants. Through the open window he can hear the pleasant sounds of the sum- mer night. There is another party, in the Rogerses' garden, behind the 14 Bentleys'. The music from the dance drifts down the hill. The band is sketchy-saxophone, drums, and piano-and all the selections are twenty years old. The band plays "Valencia," and Cash looks tenderly toward Louise, but Louise, tonight, is a discouraging figure. The lamp picks out the gray in her hair. Her apron is stained. Her face seems colorless and drawn. Suddenly, Cash begins frenziedly to beat his feet in time to 10 20 15 washed the brushes and put on some old fatigues and went into the cellar. There was a telephone call for him at around five, and when 1 went down to tell him, do you know what he was doing? He was just sitting there in the dark with a cocktail shaker. He hadn't touched the storm windows. He was just sitting there in the dark, drinking Martinis." "Poor Cash," Trace said. "You ought to get a job," Lucy said. "That would give you emo- tional and financial independence." As she spoke, they all heard the noise of furniture being moved around in the lounge. "Oh, my God!" Louise said. "He's going to run the race. Stop him, Trace, stop him! He'll hurt himself. He'll kill himself!" They all went to the door of the lounge. Louise again asked Trace to interfere, but she could see by Cash's face that he was way beyond remonstrating with. A few couples left the dance floor and stood watch- ing the preparations. Trace didn't try to stop Cash-he helped him. There was no pistol, so he slammed a couple of books together for the 21 aa 23 start. 16 242 O YOUTH AND BEAUTYI the music. He sings some gibberish-Jabajabajabajaba-to the distant saxophone. He sighs and goes into the kitchen. Here a faint, stale smell of cooking clings to the dark. From the kitchen window Cash can see the lights and figures of the Rogerses' party. It is a young people's party. The Rogers girl has asked some friends in for dinner before the dance, and now they seem to be leaving. Cars are driving away. "I'm covered with grass stains," a girl says. "I hope the old man remembered to buy gasoline," a boy says, and a girl laughs. There is nothing on their minds but the passing summer nights. Taxes and the elastic in underpants-all the unbeautiful facts of life that threaten to crush the breath out of Casb-have not touched a single figure in this garden. Then jealousy seizes trimstich savage and bitter jealousy that he feels ill. He does not understand what separates him from these children in the garden next door. He has been a young man. He has been a hero. He has been adored and happy and full of animal spirits, and now he stands in a dark kitchen, deprived of his athletic prowess, his im- petuousness, his good looks-of everything that means anything to him. He feels as if the figures in the next yard are the specters from some party in that past where all his tastes and desires lie, and from which he has been cruelly removed. He feels like a ghost of the summer evening. He is sick with longing. Then he hears voices in the front of the house. Louise turns on the kitchen light. "Oh, here you are," she says. "The Beardens stopped in. I think they'd like a drink." Cash went to the front of the house to greet the Beardens. They wanted to go up to the club, for one dance. They saw, at a glance, that Cash was at loose ends, and they urged the Bentleys to come. Louise got someone to stay with the children and then went upstairs to change. When they got to the club, they found a few friends of their age hanging around the bar, but Cash did not stay in the bar. He seemed restless and perhaps drunk. He banged into a table on his way through the lounge to the ballroom. He cut in on a young girt. He seized her too vehemently and jigged her off in an ancient two-step. She signaled openly for help to a boy in the stag line and Cash was cut out. He walked angrily off the dance floor onto the terrace. Some young couples there withdrew from one another's arms as he pushed open the screen door. He walked to the end of the terrace, where he hoped to be alone, but here he surprised another young couple, who got up from the lawn, where they seemed to have been lying, and walked off in the dark toward the pool. Louise remained in the bar with the Beardens. "Poor Cash is tight," she said. And then, "He told me this afternoon that he was going to paint the storm windows,” she said. "Well, he mixed the paint and 24 Over the sofa went Cash, over the coffee table, the lamp table, the fire screen, and the hassock. All his grace and strength seemed to have re- turned to him. He cleared the big sofa at the end of the room and instead of stopping there, he turned and started back over the course. His face was strained. His mouth hung open. The tendons of his neck protruded hideously. He made the hassock, the fire screen, the lamp table, and the coffee table. People held their breath when he ap- proached the final sofa, but he cleared it and landed on his feet. There was some applause. Then he groaned and fell. Louise ran to his side. His clothes were soaked with sweat and he gasped for breath. She knelt down beside him and took his head in her lap and stroked his thin hair. 17 18 cash had a terrible hangover on Sunday, and Louise let him sleep until it was nearly time for church. The family went off to Christ Church together at eleven, as they always did. Cash sang, prayed, and got to his knees, but the most he ever felt in church was that he stood outside the realm of God's infinite mercy, and, to tell the truth, a 5 he no more believed in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost than does my bull terrier. They returned home at one to eat the overcooked meat and stony potatoes that were their customary Sunday lunch. At around five, the Parminters called up and asked them over for a drink. Louise didn't want to go, so Cash went alone. (Oh, those suburban Sunday nights, those Sunday night blues! Those departing weekend 19
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