Essay Questions

What is the significance of peaches in "Peaches"?

In Eastern tradition, peaches can symbolize purity and marital fidelity. In this story, this knowledge has a significant bearing on the interpretation of events. The man who often visits the narrator's mother, the son of the family's landowner, plants and cares for the family's peach trees. His influence on his mother parallels the peaches: when the infidelity (possibly implied) occurs, the strong odor of rotting peaches floods the house. It is mentioned that, if he were to return home, the father would be able to smell it before even entering the house. The peaches' degradation thus mirrors the mother's moral erosion.

The scene itself would also take on a different significance. After being ordered to do so by her husband, the mother pushing and protecting the peaches on a dangerous journey back home would become symbolic of her making amends for her breach of duty by regaining her "peach" through penance of showing it respect and care.

Explain the closing image of "Peaches" in the context of the narrator's views on the nature of memory.

The story closes with an image conjured up by the narrator after several pages of futile speculation in pursuit of reconciling the various aspects of one particular childhood memory: “the arcane spectacle of me as a boy, wheeling a pram that holds my infant self.”

This image is a highly symbolic one. The narrator is making a commentary about the recursive and self-dependent nature of memory. Memory is inherently subjective and biased; all recorded experiences are from one's own point of view, and therefore the discovery of objective fact through retrospection is nearly impossible. At the end of the story, the narrator realizes this and seems to label all his work sifting through memories as pragmatically useless; the only thing he found in his search was a demonstration of his former and current character.