Rg By Oscar Cares Analysis

“RG” by Austin Oscar Casares is a story about a man and a hammer he loaned out and has not gotten it back. The narrator and his neighbor, Bannert, discontinue their friendship for four years due to this hammer not being returned. It all changes when a horrible natural disaster happens, a hurricane. This leads to the central idea that, life is too short to be angry and to not hold grudges, because not everything is what it seems to be.
This is clearly shown in the story when the narrator says, “Yes, maybe he really had forgotten that it was my hammer. that didn't excuse the past four tears, but at lease it explained that “maybe we could laugh about the whole thing.” In reality Barnnert had really just forgotten to give back the hammer.
The

protagonist is the narrator whose initials are RG. He is a pleasant guy who is always there to help out others in the community. For example, he loaned out his hammer to his neighbor.

RG has a lot of patience because after four years he was still waiting for the hammer. He waited for a while and finally gets it back and thinks to himself, “ there it was, after four years. it didn't look any different from the day he borrowed it.” At the beginning of the story he came off as a man that holds grudges and becomes agitated when he sees his neighbor. RG states, “when it was clear to me that he wasn't bringing back the hammer- there were fewer reasons to be friendly.” At the end of the story the narrator goes through a changed mind due to the hurricane then realized that Barnnert had forgotten about the hammer. The antagonist in the story is Bannert because he has the one thing that belongs to RG, his hammer. We can clearly see this when RG states, “Barnnert was different. Four days went by y nada. not hammer, no apologies, no “do you mind if i borrow it a few more days, hombre? Nothing.” It becomes obvious that RG is really infuriated because he is “different”. He thinks this because Barnnert one time loaned out a table to RG and gave it back the following day. RG says that, “Barnnert looked surprised to see me and asked if one of the legs had busted. the man couldn't understand why I wanted to return

the table so quickly.” He then tries to prove it even more by stating that the difference between them was that, “Barnnert takes everything for granted. Why should I have kept his table one minute longer than i need it?” He is saying this to prove that he is a good man because he gave the table back quickly. At the end of the story RG’s perspective changes. He notices that all those years that he had been mad at Bannert were pointless. He thinks, “It felt strange to be thanking him for giving me something that was really mine, but those were the only words that came to me.” He knew he was wrong for thinking bad of Barnnert and he really just is a nice person as well. After the hurricane he also realizes that at any given moment we could die. He was in shock with how strong the hurricane was, “trees were ripped out of the group, phone lines got knocked over, just about every part of the city flooded, the electricity was out almost a week.” RG looking at all of this made him have a change about how he now views things. He then goes on to say, “ let me say that we lived through the hurricane and we.re still here today”, like if he has gotten another chance at life and needs to forgive others in order to be content.