Seasons in the City by Italo Calvino is a story about grown-up child Marcovaldo and his adventures. Marcovaldo is a rural man who has to live in the big city because there he has a job and can feed his family. But he doesn’t like life in the cig city, because he is nature lover, he likes to watch nature, how it changes and enjoy it as long as possible. Here we can see the first conflict of the story between man needs and desires – Marcovaldo immolated his dream to live near the virgin nature in order to earn money.
He has a big family – wife and six children. Their life is far from idyllic, mostly because of lack of money, but the children never complained about that and even tried to help other, who, as they thought were even poorer as they (well, they chose the wrong child, but still). His wife didn’t have a job because she had a lot of house chores and it was quite difficult for her to be a good hostess because she couldn’t afford to buy variety of products for meal, to say nothing about clothes and other useful things. But their poverty was just a temporal question, so they believed that if they act like they have money, a wide they will have in the future. So they went to the supermarket and pretended as if they are buying something, putting the products into the cart, but then they just left it and went out with nothing in their hands. It was a kind of family sport.
In general, there are short 20 episodes which describe Marcovaldo’s life:
Mushrooms in the city – Marcovaldo finds mushrooms growing at his tram stop.
Park-bench vacation – Marcovaldo spends summer night sleeping on a park-bench, but there are always someone or something what disturbs him.
The municipal pigeon – Seeing a rare flight of autumn woodcock flying over the city, Marcovaldo wants to catch it and have it for dinner but he caught a pigeon in the result
The city lost in the snow – Marcovaldo’s dreams in the snow end unexpectedly.
The wasp treatment – Marcovaldo cures rheumatisms with wasps. A Saturday of sun, sand, and sleep – The other method of rheumatism treatment – children bury him in sand.
The lunch-box – Marcovaldo’s thoughts while having his lunch.
The forest on the superhighway – The children help Marcovaldo to look for firewood in forest.
The good air – Marcovaldo takes his children to the hills, out from the city to admire the fresh air.
A journey with the cows – Mrecovaldo’s eldest son spends his summer, parting cows and Marcovaldo envies him.
The poisonous rabbit – Marcovaldo takes home the rabbit from the hospital. The wrong stop – Marcovaldo gets lost in the city.
Where the river is more blue? – Marcovaldo tries to catch some fish in a poisonous pond.
Moon and Gnac – Marc the neon sign on the roof of the building opposite his own.
The rain and the leaves – Marcovaldo tries to cure a potted plant.
Marcovaldo at the supermarket – the family visit to the supermarket where they buy nothing.
Smoke, wind, and soap-bubbles – The children start to gather coupons to get free washing powder.
The city all to himself – Marcvaldo cannot afford a vacation, so he is wandering across deserted streets of summer city.
The garden of stubborn cats – Marcovaldo studies city cats.
Santa’s Children – Marcvaldo dresses like a Santa and gives presents to the most important clients of the company, he works for.
Marcovaldo was a blue collar worker, not very skillful one. He didn’t care about doing his work properly, because his thoughts were far from it.every day he was going to work with the thought that he hates his job, he hates the city and industrialization and how great it would be if he lived in village. He envied his elder son in one of the episodes, when Michaelo left home to pasture cows on the valley because he thought that there is no bigger pleasure than this although hi son worked really hard and was happy to come back home. Marcovaldo suffered from rheumatism, especially in spring and, as he didn’t have money for doctor to help him, he was trying different old natural ways of cure. In one of the episodes he was treating himself and other people with bites of wasps, in the other story he made his children dig him into the sand and believed that the worse he feels now, the better will be result, but, as it happened, these methods were not efficient.
