John Cheever, in The Stories of John Cheever, includes a number of stories which are clearly critical of suburbia and its effects on the people who live there. This study will examine his critique of this environment and the upper class individuals and families which reside there in what is all too often self-centered vacuousness. At the same time, it should be noted that there are characters in his stories who seem to be fairly satisfied with their lot---at least as satisfied as any individual outside of suburbia. Cheever is hardly saying that every person in suburbia is a miserable wretch. However, the thrust of his stories in this regard emphasize the negative impact of suburbia on its denizens. The characters on whom these stories focus are miserable, indeed, but if all the characters were similarly unhappy the main characters would not stand out in the general malaise.
Above all, Cheever's fictional analysis focuses on the lack of spiritual substance in these people's lives. In "Goodbye, My Brother," Lawrence symbolizes this lack of spiritual, emotional and psychological grounding which has created in him a sense of desolation and isolation. He is a truly miserable man who is not able or willing to make the internal choices which would enlighten him and allow him to rationally see what is good and bad about his environment and his family. As a result, he concludes that everything about his family and the environment in which he lives must be judged, condemned and discarded. However, were Cheever merely saying that Lawrence is an unhappy man who should be utterly pitied, a man who has nothing true to say about the drawbacks of suburbia, the work would be a sermon or diatribe instead of a work of art. What gives Lawrence his strength as a character, miserable as he is, is that he does have some truth to tell about his environment and the people who live in it. His brother, the narrator, refers to Lawrence:
I had heard him s...