A Place in the Country” and “The Picnic” illustrate the before and after of an affair. About ten years after they have ended their affair, Clem and Nettie, a girl, meet at Clem’s country place, attending a picnic set up by Clem’s wife...
On a Sunday in August, Commander Caractacus Pott announces Mimsie, the mother, Jemima and Jeremy, eight-year-old twins: “Today is going to be a roaster,” he said, “a scorcher. There’s only one thing to do, and that’s for us to take a...
When a child is murdered at Bratbe’s picnic, a public and family scandal erupts. Then it begins to rain. Hytha Bratbe’s picnic is an annual event for about 800 invited guests, including the Prime Minister, at her estate in the West Sussex Downs, surpassing...
Ironically, the picnic at Hanging Rock overpowers the narrative though it is the novel’s shortest section. The events and ambiance are so actual that readers accept the narrative at face value. Lindsay helped set this delusion by suggesting, “Whether...
Five years after Sylvia Plath’s suicide, Hughes wrote Iron Man as entertainment to help their children Frieda and Nicholas deal with their mother’s death. The story is a fantasy about a colossal Iron Man (from somewhere unknown in the universe) with an appetite for...
Though it’s February and light snow is on the ground, Rose Burbank stops for a picnic. She’s romancing George Burbank, a good-hearted undemonstrative rancher. He’s thinking about his automobile and what it would be to have a more luxurious model, a...
O’Hara’s “A Few Trips and Some Poetry “is a long story about a picnic where the pleasure of sharing is sexual. O’Hara’s picnic-sex episode provides a memory that lasts a lifetime. What is served at this picnic is not the usual fare;...
Wolfe’s tale of murder unfolds when Rex Stout’s three-hundred-and-fifty-pound detective is to give a short speech at the United Restaurant Workers of America Fourth of July celebration at Culp’s Meadows, somewhere on Long Island. As narrated by...
Angelou fondly recalls the “summer picnic fish-fry” with characteristic high spirits. As narrated in her fictionalized memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou explains this was the biggest outdoor event of the year” in the African American Stamps, Arkansas....
The picnic celebrates Ada’s sexual awakening on her twelfth birthday. * It’s a picnic during which she initiates a life-long incestuous relationship with her older brother Van Veen. As a sign of her age, Ada wears a long but airy and ample black skirt with...
