Actions after the Loss of a Child in The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

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In the novel, The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, the main is Frank Bascombe. Frank is a divorced father of three, who lost his oldest son several years ago Reye’s syndrome. After the loss of his son, Frank fell into a dreamlike state leading him to rash behavior, which left his marriage in ruins. He began having in affairs, looking for something that doesn’t have to do with his life nor the loss of both his wife and son. He hoped to be able to define himself by these women for a short period in order to forget his own troubles for a while. Has the events changed the way Frank views the world and himself? X is Frank’s ex-wife, and throughout the book he doesn’t refer to her by her given name even though he considers his love for her and his desire to reenter her life. Frank is still in love with X and feels bad for his bad behavior, which led him to his divorce. X is successful on her own, having made an accomplishment for herself in her selected career and living the kind of life she has always wanted. Such a position made Frank both proud and feeling, as though it is proof of his incapability to be a good husband and provider. X has custody of the couples remaining two children and lives in a house development near Frank’s family house. She continues to stay nice with Frank, but refuses to discuss her romantic life with him; which often makes him angry; “All we really want is to get to the point where the past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life. Who’s history can reveal very much” (P. 24). Frank starts dating Vicki, a young southern nurse who has recently divorced her first husband and behaves naively, even though Frank knows that she has seen terrible things in her career and therefore could not be as clos... ... middle of paper ... ...uckett, who visited Frank couple times to share his emotions and feeling and the issues he was facing. One day Walter tried to kiss him, and Frank ordered him out of his house; where he later committed suicide. Frank is constantly doubting himself and life because of the elusiveness of happiness for example, “ Is life itself an illness or a syndrome? Who knows? We’ve all felt that way I’m confident, since there’s no way I could feel what hundreds of millions of other citizens haven’t” (p. 135). Frank finds an opportunity to travel to Florida to find Walter’s daughter as he told him in a letter. After staying there for a couple days, Frank finds peace in Florida and decides to stay there in order to start a new life and forget all the troubles back home. Towards the end of the novel, it shoes how the death of Walter changes the way Frank acts and saves his own life.

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