4 Summer 1 Fate

Joyce Carol Oates’ Four Summers follows Sissie and her family as they age and mature. The story takes place in the same lakeside tavern over four different summers throughout Sissie’s life.

The most revealing and pivotal scene in the story, in my opinion, is the fourth and final summer. As she sits in the bar, at this point married and pregnant, she gazes at her husband Jesse and notes “Jesse is young, but the outline of what he will be is already in his face.” (56) Through the first three summers at the bar, we see how Sissie and her brothers love for her parents turns into a confused state of hatred, primarily for her mother. So this line is rather shocking, reveling that although Sissie has grown up and learned much about her parent’s character through their interactions at this bar, she still is following the same path in which she despises.

During the first summer, Sissie and her brothers want nothing more then to go out on the lake in a rowboat. No matter how many times they ask, their Dad continually ignores them and pushes them away. He would rather drink and talk with the other people they are with. Toward the end of the first summer we learn that the lake is filled with some sort of “scum.” I interpreted the scum that fills the lake as a symbol and metaphor for alcoholism and side effects it brings upon Sissies’ family. This metaphor is played out as a bird becomes trapped in the scum and cannot free itself and fly away. One by one, kids begin throwing rocks at the bird, and Frank hits the bird on its head, ultimately killing it.

As her father continuously drinks, ignoring his children, we hear Jerry say “All he does is drink.. I hate him, I’d wish he’d die.” And we later learn that their Father dies and untimely death due to a factory accident. Sissie says “At night I hold Jesse, thinking of my father and what happened to him—all that drinking..” (55). Although the factory accident is not directly attributed to alcoholism, it can be inferred, and even it is not, Sissies’ fathers alcohol abuse pushed him further and further away from his kids.

Why does Sissie love Jesse if she sees the same qualities of her father in him that hurt their entire family? At one point Sissie even states “Why did I marry Jesse?” (55). Sissie herself is symbolically trapped in the scum of the lake, unable to fly away and free herself from a similar fate her parents faced. Despite the insight Sissie reveals through out the story and apparent maturity and understanding of her surroundings, we are left seeing her helplessly turn into her mother, like the bird stuck in the scum. 

-Harrison Bard