Lost Daddy

This story is interesting because is starts off with the words " the mommy". Throughout the rest of the story, Joyce Carol Oates uses "the mommy" and "the daddy" to explain the mother and father of a young, four year old boy. At first you cannot tell that their marriage has many problems, but as the story goes on the father tells his son things that annoy him about his wife. The father thinks that because the boy is so young he wont retain any of the information he shares, and Tod will surely not share any of it with his mother. Tod and his father go for a walk, this walk ends up being a plan of the father's to try to catch his wife in the act of doing something she isn't supposed to be doing. You do not know if he suspects that his wife is cheating.

I liked this story because you really had to pay attention to the details, certain characters that were brought up, had one meaning but then you could forget about them. This isn't a story that you should read just for fun because in order to really understand the meaning you must read it a couple of times, even discussing it with a friend who has read it.