Tematisk analyse af Bel Kaufmans 'Sunday in the Park'

The story “Sunday in the Park”, is a short story written by Bel Kaufmann. The story touches themes as family/gender roles, stereotypes, raising a child properly and class differences. These themes found the base of the story. In the story you meet two different families, from two different classes and with two different ways of behaving.

The first time we are introduced to the families, their dissimilarities appear distinct. On one hand, there is this nuclear family containing a mother, her husband Morton and their son Larry. Morton reads the Times Magazine and holds his arm round his wife, and Larry plays in the sandbox. They peacefully enjoy their Sunday afternoon in the park.

But this peace is disturbed when Joe, the son of the big man, starts throwing sand on their own son Larry. At this point, we are introduced to the other family containing the big man and his son Joe. The distance between the two families’ ways of acting appears clear in this situation.

Larry’s mother tries to tell Joe that what he is doing is wrong and that he must stop. This shows that she tries to resolve the dispute peacefully. The mother is a woman with success in her life. She has a child and a husband. At the beginning of the conflict, she acts calm, which means she tries to behave well. She might have a sophisticated background and her dream job. Also when Joe throws sand on Larry once again, her first thought is to rush to her child and to punish the other child, but she controls it, because she always has taught Larry to fight his own fights.