Tobias Wolff’s Story say yes

Tobias Wolff’s story “say yes” is a short story about an argument of whether white people should marry black people between a man and his wife, and finally the man changed his idea and “say yes” to his wife. At first I just think this story is just narrating a story about different ideas between husband and wife and how the husband makes the concession finally. After read the story for a couple of times, I found this story has something interesting underlying and which is also my thesis statement: it is a love story about a man who loves his wife so much.

Wolff prefers writing short story stories to novels and he said “ when I write a short story, I feel like I’m somehow cooperating with the story”(807). I think it is because when writing a short story, narrator can find the same experience in that short story easily, just like to tell a story about himself. The story “say yes” may come from some of wolff’s life experience, that is why he can put a heavy emotional color in the story and make the story like an real story. Sometimes there is no true or false in an argument between husband and wife, the whole story seems like a common and usual family life, but there exists some question which interesting and worth to be dig in: why the majority of story goes with dish washing? And what is the strange in the end of the story, why the husband changed his mind finally. When I dig deeper to the story, I find the answers of these questions. And all of the answers suggest what the narrator what to show to the reader: a good husband who has the different ideology with his wife on the question “will you marry me if I am black” finally takes his wife’s perspective to see that question and changed his mind.

From the st...

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...e too fast on this”, “Since you put it that way—“, “Jesus, Ann. All right. No.” we can see how he don’t want to say “ no”, he was in struggling, although he want to make his wife happy and gave the answer she want, he can’t chat on her, because he loves her. The next awkward situation is not his fault, what he did was just told the truth to his wife.

Later the poor and inculpable man came outside to throw the garbage. The clear night and few stars in the west and the steady, light traffic on EL Camino made him to see the life and the question in another perspective. He though about the old days and though about the future. Eventually he found how precious his wife to him and he loves his wife so much. He feel that he argue with her and make her unhappy. He feel regret, so he changed his mind. A man who loves his wife really much would so something like him.