In Joyce Carol Oates’ short story, “…& Answers” a woman, who is mentally ill, is visiting with a psychiatrist to discuss an accident that happened involving the death of her daughter. The mother and daughter were supposed to be going to the park to play, but there have been some older men hanging around the park, so the mother didn’t feel comfortable bringing her daughter there to play. Instead they went for a ride to show the little girl how beautiful the north area of the state was this time of year. During their drive, they came upon a man who was swerving on the road and next thing the woman knew, was that she was being placed on a stretcher and into an ambulance. As she talks about the accident, she begins to bring up and talk about some …show more content…
There are conflicts with the main character and her father. We see the conflict with her father when Oates’ has the psychiatrist have the woman talk about her father and express some feelings towards him, she said “I was afraid of him. But I loved him” (46). There was a mixture of feelings for him since he was her father, so she loved him, but he also wasn’t the best role model in her life and was someone she feared. As the woman shares memories of her father, the readers realizes that her father is one reason why she is in the state she is in today. One quote from the story to further the statement about her father is, “He had many secrets he kept from all of us, about work, and money…even from my mother he kept secrets” (46). She couldn’t trust him and didn’t know what he was saying was true and what was a lie. That most likely made her not able to trust other men in her life, thinking they would act the same way to …show more content…
Since she was fearful of her father, she then thought she passed that fear down to her daughter by some of the same actions her daughter had done that she had done herself. She stated, “Is that possible, that children can inherit fear” (46). This causes the woman to have problems with herself and think that she was the reason for her daughter to turn out the way she did. She also didn’t think about having another child to risk passing the fear on again. Her childhood and how her father wasn’t always a part of her life resulted in her future to be how it turned
The chapter “A Fathers Influence” is constructed with several techniques including selection of detail, choice of language, characterization, structure and writers point of view to reveal Blackburn’s values of social acceptance, parenting, family love, and a father’s influence. Consequently revealing her attitude that a child’s upbringing and there parents influence alter the characterization of a child significantly.
With these two divergent personas that define the grandmother, I believe the ultimate success of this story relies greatly upon specific devices that O’Connor incorporates throughout the story; both irony and foreshadowing ultimately lead to a tale that results in an ironic twist of fate and also play heavily on the character development of the grandmother. The first sense of foreshadowing occurs when the grandmother states “[y]es and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, Caught you” (1042). A sense of gloom and an unavoidable meeting with the miscreant The Misfit seem all but inevitable. I am certain that O’Connor had true intent behind th...
Previously, the narrator has intimated, “She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own.” Her thoughts and emotions engulf her, but she does not “struggle” with them. They “belonged to her and were her own.” She does not have to share them with anyone; conversely, she must share her life and her money with her husband and children and with the many social organizations and functions her role demands.
The narrator, a new mother, is revoked of her freedom to live a free life and denied the fact that she is “sick”, perhaps with postpartum depression, by her husband, a physician, who believes whatever sorrows she is feeling now will pass over soon. The problematic part of this narrative is that this woman is not only kept isolated in a room she wishes to have nothing to do with, but her creative expression is revoked by her husband as we can see when she writes: “there comes John, and I must put this away, - he hates to have me write a word (Gilman,
...ther is losing her daughter to time and circumstance. The mother can no longer apply the word “my” when referring to the daughter for the daughter has become her own person. This realization is a frightening one to the mother who then quickly dives back into her surreal vision of the daughter now being a new enemy in a world already filled with evils. In this way it is easier for the mother to acknowledge the daughter as a threat rather than a loss. However, this is an issue that Olds has carefully layered beneath images of war, weapons, and haircuts.
...e relationship with men, as nothing but tools she can sharpen and destroy, lives through lust and an uncanny ability to blend into any social class makes her unique. Her character is proven as an unreliable narrator as she exaggerates parts of the story and tries to explain that she is in fact not guilty of being a mistress, but a person caught in a crossfire between two others.
Her family life is depicted with contradictions of order and chaos, love and animosity, conventionality and avant-garde. Although the underlying story of her father’s dark secret was troubling, it lends itself to a better understanding of the family dynamics and what was normal for her family. The author doesn’t seem to suggest that her father’s behavior was acceptable or even tolerable. However, the ending of this excerpt leaves the reader with an undeniable sense that the author felt a connection to her father even if it wasn’t one that was desirable. This is best understood with her reaction to his suicide when she states, “But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” (pg. 399)
Reader Response Essay - Joyce Carol Oates's Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Her father was a huge part of her life. She had never had a boyfriend, nor would her father have allowed it.... ... middle of paper ... ...
The second person point of view helps the reader to connect with the girl in this story. It shows the reader a better understanding of this character and how she is being raised to be a respectable woman. This point of view also gives us an insight on the life of women and shows us how they fit into their society. Through this point of view, the reader can also identify the important aspects of the social class and culture. The daughter tries to assert a sense of selfhood by replying to the mother but it is visible that the mother is being over whelming and constraining her daughter to prepare her for
...cts of the mother and the descriptions, which are presented to us from her, are very conclusive and need to be further examined to draw out any further conclusions on how she ?really? felt. The mother-daughter relationship between the narrator and her daughter bring up many questions as to their exact connection. At times it seems strong, as when the narrator is relating her childhood and recounting the good times. Other times it is very strained. All in all the connection between the two seems to be a very real and lifelike account of an actual mother-daughter relationship.
There is no one to listen to her or care for her ‘personal’ opinions. Her husband cares for her, in a doctor’s fashion, but her doesn’t listen to her (Rao, 39). Dealing with a mentally ill patient can be difficult, however, it’s extremely inappropriate for her husband to be her doctor when he has a much larger job to fulfill. He solely treats his wife as a patient telling her only what could benefit her mental sickness rather than providing her with the companionship and support she desperately needs. If her husband would have communicated with her on a personal level, her insanity episode could have been prevented. Instead of telling her everything she needed he should’ve been there to listen and hear her out. Instead she had to seek an alternate audience, being her journal in which he then forbids her to do. All of this leads to the woman having nobody to speak or express emotion to. All of her deep and insane thoughts now fluttered through her head like bats in the Crystal Cave.
The daughter alludes to an idea that her mother was also judged harshly and made to feel ashamed. By the daughters ability to see through her mothers flaws and recognize that she was as wounded as the child was, there is sense of freedom for both when the daughter find her true self. Line such as “your nightmare of weakness,” and I learned from you to define myself through your denials,” present the idea that the mother was never able to defeat those that held her captive or she denied her chance to break free. The daughter moments of personal epiphany is a victory with the mother because it breaks a chain of self-loathing or hatred. There is pride and love for the women they truly were and is to be celebrated for mother and daughter.
basis of the plot and themes of this novel. The fond memories she possessed of her mother and the harsh ones of her father are reflected in the thoughts and
As a girl, she had an extremely difficult childhood as an orphan and was passed around from orphanage to orphanage. The author has absolute admiration for how his mother overcame her upbringing. He opens the third chapter by saying, “She was whatever the opposite of a juvenile delinquent is, and this was not due to her upbringing in a Catholic orphanage, since whatever it was in her that was the opposite of a juvenile delinquent was too strong to have been due to the effect of any environment…the life where life had thrown her was deep and dirty” (40). By saying that she was ‘the opposite of a juvenile delinquent’, he makes her appear as almost a saintly figure, as he looks up to her with profound admiration. He defends his views on his mother’s saintly status as not being an effect of being in a Catholic orphanage, rather, due to her own strong will. O’Connor acknowledges to the extent that her childhood was difficult through his diction of life ‘throwing’ her rather than her being in control of it. As a result, she ended up in unsanitary and uncomfortable orphanages, a ‘deep and dirty’ circumstance that was out of her control. Because of this, the author recognizes that although his childhood was troublesome, his mother’s was much worse. She was still able to overcome it, and because of it, he can overcome