Expelled (short story)
"Expelled" is a short story by John Cheever published by The New Republic in 1930. The story appears in a collection of Cheever's short fiction, Thirteen Uncollected Stories by John Cheever, published in 1994 by Academy Chicago Publishers An autobiographical piece, "Expelled" is Cheever's first published work of fiction. Plot The story is written from the first-person point-of-view. Without making it explicit, the unnamed narrator is Cheever. The story begins In medias res. No clearly articulated plot develops. A student at a prestigious prep school is summarily dismissed from the institution for poor academic performance during his junior year. He reflects upon the nature of his experience at the school, stressing his alienation and disaffection: the restrained analysis of the academic establishment is a covert but powerful indictment of the system. The narrator provides a number of vignettes of those educators who impressed him because they challenged the school administrators, expressed great enthusiasm for the subjects they taught, or deviated from the socially approved expressions of their personal suffering. The story ends ambiguously. Now in exile, the former student struggles with the implications of his expulsion, a painful, but liberating right of passage that marks his entry into adulthood. Publication