A Family Supper

Citations come from The Penguin Book of Modern British Stories.

“A Family Supper.” Firebird 2. Ed. T. J. Binding. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1983. 121-31. Rpt. The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988. 434-42.

Reading Check

1. The narrator lives in California, his father in Kamakura District, Tokyo, Japan. (Page 434)

2. She was poisoned by eating a fish called fugu. (Page 434)

3. It collapsed. (Page 435)

4. The father’s deceased business partner, who died by suicide (Page 435)

5. Moving to the United States with her boyfriend (Page 436)

6. Move back to the father’s house (Page 442)

Short Answer

1. The narrator’s choice to leave Japan to live in the United States is what caused the strained relationship between him and his parents. (Page 434)

2. She needs to play the role of the obedient daughter around him, though that is clearly not who she is. Alone with her brother, she smokes a cigarette and talks about hitchhiking around the United States with her boyfriend. (Page 436)

3. The narrator can speak more freely with his father than Kikuko can, although it’s still not completely free. While the father is stern with Kikuko, he is more open with the narrator, such as when he admits the truth about Watanabe. While the father is harsher on Kikuko, he is proud of her, while he still feels disappointment in the narrator. (Various pages)

4. He implies that he believes the narrator’s mother died by suicide, prompted by her disappointment in her son’s actions. (Page 439)

5. Wearing a white kimono and looking older than the narrator remembers, his mother looks like the ghost he used to see in the garden when he was young. (Pages 440-441)

6. The father’s depiction of Watanabe as a “man of principle” reflects his ties to the traditional norms in which he was raised. However, when the narrator presses him about whether Wanatabe’s killing of his family was the right thing to do, his father says it was not and “there are other things besides work.” Looking back on his life, he realizes that he could have been “a more attentive father” and had a better relationship with his son. Conflicting details about the father make him a complex and ambiguous character. (Various pages)