The Country Husband, by John Cheever, is a story about the life of Francis Weed as he dealt with his mid-life crisis. There is a supportive mid-life crisis theme throughout the entirety of the story. John Cheever goes through many stressful events that almost caused him to lose his family life. The story starts off on a plane in which John was riding home from Minneapolis. The plane crashed and John was left with a near death experience. This event kicked off the story of John’s crisis with a big bang. From here on everything John goes through is normally excepted in our society, but with the plane crash in the back of his mind, any normal events become abnormal and add up to overwhelm him. Like any person would do in our culture, John returned home expecting sympathy and wide-open ears to hear about his exciting plane crash. This is where things started to go bad. John returns to a house full of crying and arguing children that wanted nothing to do with the great story of the crash. This upsets John but he gets over it and tucks away his disappointment; the overwhelming begins. John had a minor release of stress at the dinner table; he yelled to stop the madness but it only added to his problems when everyone started crying including his wife, Julia. Up to this point, the reader believes John to have just had a bad day, but the tragedy that awaits him is yet to come. John walked outside and reminisced about all of the things that are a common anomaly in the nighttime at Shady Hill. During this short pause in events the author is cooling down the plot. Not only does John get stressed out in the book, but the reader also feels his stress, so the author throws in this brief cool down period to bring stress levels back to a status quo. The next night John and Julia are at dinner with the Farquarsons. John recognized the servant as a girl that was punished by public embarrassment while he was in the war. John did n...
