John Cheever, in The Stories of John Cheever, includes a number of stories which are clearly critical of suburbia and its effects on the people who live there. This study will examine his critique of this environment and the upper class individuals and families which reside there in what is all too often self-centered vacuousness. At the same time, it should be noted that there are characters in his stories who seem to be fairly satisfied with their lot -at least as satisfied as any individual outside of suburbia. Cheever is hardly saying that every person in suburbia is a miserable wretch. However, the thrust of his stories in this regard emphasize the negative impact of suburbia on its denizens. The characters on whom these stories focus are miserable, indeed, but if all the characters were similarly unhappy the main characters would not stand out in…