Peace and Calm in Today Will Be A Quiet Day :: Today Will Be a Quiet Day Essays

Peace and Calm in Today Will Be A Quiet Day  Ã‚     Ã‚   It seems that everyone thinks that all disaster has struck in Amy Hempel’s "Today Will Be A Quiet Day." I disagree. I think that everything might seem to be going bad, but when the day is over the children’s father realizes that everything is absolutely fine. The situations in the beginning of the story lead you to believe that the story will be depressing. But throughout the story I pick up little hints that this day was exactly what everybody needed: to get away from everything. At the end of the day everyone seems to be peaceful and calm. The father seems to be a single dad who has picked his children up for the weekend. The mother isn’t mentioned in the story, which makes me believe that the parents are already split up and maybe going through the finalizing of the divorce papers. The children happen to be staying with their mother throughout the separation, and they are now with their father for the weekend. Since he doesn’t get to see them that often now, he decides to take a day to spend completely with the children and go on a little trip. The father does this because he "wanted to know how they were, is all" (Hempel 1202). They seemed to be doing great on their own, but he just wanted to make sure. During the trip, the father realizes that there is a lot of hostility between the kids. The brother keeps nagging on his sister, trying to scare her. When the father sees this, he says that people think they are safe but they really are just thinking that they are invisible because their eyes are closed (Hempel 1203). The family was safe together until the separation. The father was thinking that everything was fine between the kids, but when he got them together he saw how sarcastic they were to each other. The father senses all the depressing conversation and tries to lighten it up by asking if either of the kids knows any jokes. This attempt was shot down though when the joke not only didn’t have an understandable punch line, but it dealt with an unlaughable matter. When they finally made it to Pete’s, the restaurant where they were going to eat, the kids are still bickering back and forth.