Caroline M. Levchuck, a writer and editor, has published articles on literature along with nonfiction essays and children's books. In this essay, she focuses on O 'Hara's Appointment in Samarra as a portrait of the disintegration of a marriage.

Appointment in Samarra has been viewed in many different ways. John Updike called it a "social panorama," while Ernest Hemingway dubbed it "a Christmas story." O'Hara himself, however, in a letter to his brother Tom prior to the novel's publication, referred to it as "essentially the story of a young married couple and their breakdown in the first year of the depression." Despite themes of fate and inevitability and the failure of parental love, then, Appointment in Samarra may be seen as an intimate look at the failings of a young union. Many of the truths evident in O'Hara's work hold true to this day, an age where...