Question

What is the theme of the short story "The Cliff" by Charles Baxter?

Answer 1

A young boy is being driven to a cliff at an unspecified location on the California coastline. The driver, a cantankerous old man, interrogates the boy en route, suspicious of his experience with women, how well he has memorized the old man's instructions, his moral, spiritual, and emotional purity, and his impatience to get started with the initiation into what the old man calls “the spells.” Noting the old man's incessant coughing and smoking, his occasional hits from the wine bottle stashed under his seat, and his irritability in general, the boy wonders aloud...