The Strunks and the neighbors
The respectable suburban families George watches with alienation, defensiveness, and reluctant fascination.
To maintain secure, conventional family life in the suburban community.
The book
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeThe Strunks and neighboring families represent property, routine, children, and accepted social normality. George’s contempt for them reveals genuine exclusion as well as his own defensive superiority.
How the book draws them
- TidyLawns, houses, and routines project domestic order.
- ConventionalTheir lives fit the public scripts George’s partnership did not.
- UncomprehendingThey see George without understanding his widowhood.
- Not caricaturesTheir ordinary humanity complicates George’s hostile generalizations.
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