Right and Wrong in "Goodbye, My Brother" Anonymous College

John Cheever’s story Goodbye, My Brother is a complex tangle of morality, reliability, truth and deception. The narrator is paired opposite his brother, Lawrence, as their core values clash during a family vacation on a picturesque island during a Massachusetts summer. Cheever weaves Biblical references between layers of familial politics and East Coast suburban culture, using the allusions to create setting, tension, and character, as well as to make a subtle yet final determination on whose version of the story is really the truth.

SECTION I, PART 1: The Significance of Names

Cheever uses names as a shorthand way to set the scene and to outline some of the major tensions between groups and individuals before even introducing the specifics. Peter Matthews connects the name of the family’s island, Laud’s head, to Archbishop William Laud, “who was beheaded by the Puritans in 1645 for attempting to bring back into the Episcopal Church music, ritual, the Communion table, and the sacramental system the Puritans had banned” (2-3). The “main” Pommeroy family—that is, everyone but Lawrence—enjoys dancing and music and parties, whereas Lawrence is often compared to “a Puritan cleric” (4) for expressing his disapproval of his family’s...