The Breakout

By Joyce Cary

Subjects: Readers, English language, textbooks for foreign speakers

Description: Tom Sponson, at 53, was a successful man. He had worked up a first-class business, married a chaining wife, built himself a good house in the London suburbs. His son, Bob, 19, & daughter, April, 16, were doing well. All the same Tom felt that none of them needed him, apart from the money he gave for their support. One day he decided he just could not go on, so instead of going to his office, he went to Westford, a seaside place where he had spent a summer holiday before his marriage. He enjoys a life of plesant idleness, meaning to write to his wife, but never getting around to it. She catches up with him, and he is tearfully handed over to a psychiatrist. After several weeks in a sanitarium he recovers and goes bade to his old routine. He said he had breakout, not a breakdown, and the family refers to it as a holiday, a rest cure.