“Reunion” by John Cheever is a short story about Charlie who hasn’t seen his father since his parents’ divorce. So on his way back to his mother’s house he schedules a lunch with his father. Yet Charlie’s view on his father changes when his father continually has problems controlling his bad attitude. In “Powder and “Reunion” the authors use father/son relationships, point of view and conflict to portray to the reader that almost all father and son relationships have their flaws. In the two short stories it seems as if the sons’ relationships with their father were quite different, but they also had their similarities because both of them cared for their son.
This disgrace carries on throughout the story as Franklin is embarrassed and uncomfortable working at a fast food restaurant because of his high qualifications. He is confronted by a man in the bathroom whom the author assumes thinks that he got his girlfriend pregnant and never graduated high school. It is clear that Franklin is very self-conscious as he states, “I want to tell him that I'm in the top 5 percent of students at my college, that I am two semesters away from graduating, and that I'm on my way to grad school to get a Ph.D. in English literature” (25). Franklin hated the feeling of people looking down on him and pitying him because of his job. He could not see the
Eden just recently was reunited with his birth parents. He was adopted when he was nine months old to his family now and couldn’t ask for a better family. But he, along with everyone else that is adopted, just wanted to know where he came from and why he was put up for adoption. Again and again he was turned down by the adoption agency because he was a part of a closed adoption. Eden had stopped trying to find answers after he was turned town several times.
Yes, I think that the company man was a workaholic and didn’t have anytime for his family and that’s why his children were always silent around him and him and his wife had a divorce. Being a workaholic doesn’t just affect your family, but also yourself too. I think as time went on he was noticing that his family didn’t want to be around him anymore and Phil was getting depressed over time. That’s why he became over weight and died at an early age. No one was really surprised at this because he was a heart attack natural, but still
I just let it go because maybe he was having a bad day but as I started to order it seemed like the cashier was trying to overcharge me. I ordered two of the 5 dollar pizzas but the cashier kept charging me for extra things and when I told him about it he got angry and started yelling at me. I was being as calm as possible to tell him what he did wrong but he just kept yelling. Finally one of his co-workers came to help the cashier but he still had an attitude the whole time. As I was walking out he was talking trash and being very impolite.
The 1998 movie Smoke Signals focuses on the process of how Victor Joseph accepts and forgives his father, Arnold Joseph. From the beginning, Victor is uncertain about his father’s feelings about him because Victor has heard his father Arnold has saved Thomas, not Victor. Every time Victor hears it, his uncertainty about his father Arnold increases regularly. Victor’s feeling of lack of the father’s love is well illustrated by Victor’s answer to his father’s question: “What is your favorite Indian?” He answers “nobody,” and repeats it three times to emphasize his distrustfulness on his father. Victor’s feeling of the lack of his father’s love is more deepened after his father Arnold has left home.
In the story there are many instances in which Bartleby refuses to do as instructed by the lawyer his explorer. I feel sympathy for the lawyer because it must be hard to deal with an insubordinate good worker. Bartleby does his work that he wants to do well. The lawyer is in a tight spot because he has two other copiers Turkey and Nippers who were employed before Bartleby and hear him disrespect the lawyer. I could imagine if I were them I would be thinking look at this new guy challenging the boss and doing it in a polite but direct way.
Recently I read the story “My Fathers Brain What Alzheimer’s Takes Away” by Jonathan Franzen in my English 101 course. In this story Jonathan Franzen speaks about his parent’s relationship before and after Alzheimer’s, how he viewed Alzheimer’s affecting their lives and his feelings towards his father’s death. Franzen also often illustrates his mothers struggle to deal with his father’s disease and the many emotions attached to it. He talks about how his father started to forget different things which eventually turned into forgetting many everyday things. Franzen explained that his father got lost in his own neighborhood in one instance and couldn’t remember his own children’s birthdays another.
He ran into Thomas who was an old friend, but they hadn’t spoke since they got in a fist fight back in school. Thomas heard about Victor’s dad and sent his condolences to Victor. Victor told Thomas about needing money to go to Phoenix and Thomas offered to pay, but he had to go along on the trip. Victor told him, “I can’t take your money, I mean, I haven’t hardly talked to you in years. We’re not really friends anymore” (Alexie 413).
He figures this out when visiting his old home in California. He was furious. This was untruthful of his dad, and that's one thing that Chris hates most. Because of this incident he stopped talking to either of his parents and was withdrawn for the first time in his life. “Chris's smoldering anger, it turns out was fueled by a discovery he'd made two summers earlier, during his cross-country wanderings... Chris pieced together the facts of his father's previous marriage and subsequent divorce-facts to which he hadn't been privy.” (p. 121) This is not good mainly for Chris and his dad's relationship and also his mom and him.