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A Father's Story Short Story

1573 Words7 Pages

It is Luke’s fatherly love for his daughter that leads to his dilemma between pursuing the truth of doing what is just and right and demonstrating his love for his daughter. "A Father's Story," by Andre Dubus shares that the love of a father toward his own daughter means that he will protect her even if the process calls for him to misplace a part of himself. To protect his daughter, the father is forced to undergo challenges, a battle between his mind and his values. In the story, Luke Ripley, the protagonist, drops his core principles and ethical values deliberately to protect his daughter. I believe that the central conflict in "A Father's story" is a betrayal of a friend's trust and personal values and ethics for the sake of love, because …show more content…

Those that he loved the most had abandoned him. The author demonstrates the beginning of this abandonment when he writes, “On Wednesday after Gloria left with the kids and a U-Haul trailer, I was sitting on the front steps, it was summer, and I was watching cars go by on the road” (Dubus 17). I believe this quote gives an active insight into the background as to why he makes the decisions that he does. He upholds Catholic doctrines and values in which he builds his faith and relationship with God. The main conflict in “A Father’s Story”, is a personal conflict. This is where the main character battles with thoughts against himself. Luke Ripley seems to be a satisfied man in his life, but he hates the weary drudgery associated with the life itself. Luke is standing with his faith. However, the faith he is standing with, endangers him, making his home confused. Luke says that he knows that trials are coming and that it is the faith that he upholds that is bringing him trials, “I knew that life would try me.” (Dubus 16). It seems he lost his family because of hate. Paul is trying to figure out the best way he could have tried to save the family. “A Father’s Story,” at different points, portrays Luke Ripley as the antagonist and the protagonist

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“There on the cabin porch, on three legs, stood the living skeleton of what had been a mighty coonhound.” The hound could use only one side of his face. The arm of and shoulder of Sounder faced immobilization. “Half the voice of the man was gone too, so in slow, measured, stuttering he told how he had been caught in a dynamite blast in the prison quarry, how the dead side had been crushed under an avalanche of limestone, and how he had been missed for a whole night in a search for dead and wounded.” Both Sounder and the father crippled from tragic events.

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In addition, the daughter finds a fork in the road that she finds questioning. Towards the end of the passage, when Dad went to find the vocabulary book, the daughter thought, “Why should I eat when my own father has abandoned his own food? Nothing’s more important than his books and vocabulary words. He might say I matter, but when he goes on a scavenger hunt for a book, I realize I don’t matter” (Lopez paragraph 26). This shows that the daughter feels that her father does not care as much about her.

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Although the son is the main reason the man keeps fighting to survive in this horrible desolated world, the son also plays an important role as the conscience of the father that remains him that they are the “good guys”,

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From 1933 to 1945 up to six million Jews died in the Holocaust. Think about how many of them were a father or a son. That means that someone could have lost their father, son, or brother. In the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, it tells the story of fifteen year old Elie, his experience in the Holocaust, and how he survived it with his father. In Maus, by Art Spiegelman, Artie interviews his father Vladek, a survivor of the Holocaust, and writes a graphic novel on his experience.

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There is a theory that there are only seven different story-lines in the world, but they are all re-used in different ways to make up all of the books and movies and plays we have today. If that theory were true, Luke's life fell into the category of the quiet kid with no glaringly obvious hopes, dreams or aspirations, if that category existed. His life seemed to helplessly revolve around school, and he spent all of his nights slaving over books and copies, studying his subject matter with an outlook of frustration on his world. Luke was nothing special to himself or to anybody else. Of course, if he found the right person, they would be able to find the special and unique aspects of Luke and embrace them, but that somebody just hadn't seemed

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Luke feels left out and should have a choice to be a citizen and go outside no matter what the law says. The tone in the “Among The Hidden” is sad and lonely. It is sad and lonly because Luke is forced to stay inside a black room with no windows or light. The darkness of his room explains the sad and scary tone. “He hadn’t left the house in a week now, and could almost hear the outdoors calling him.

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In this part of the book it shows how much he would not think twice on raising the gun on someone he thinks would be a threat to him or his son. This proves how the father was being very adamant but for the reason to keep their supplies to sustain their survival for as long as possible in this situation. Love your family to the fullest, because in the end they are all that we have left. The father and son share an inseparable love. The father is reluctant to let his son go with him when danger is exhibited.

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Gregor, another main character, is also going through father issues. His father, who he was very close to, passed away. Similar to Zoe, he wasn’t sure what to do. He was mad as well. Mad at himself, mad at his brother, mad at his mom.

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Throughout the memoir, we learn about Baca’s father through the memories he would share. Baca does not degrade his father, even though his father was not there for him. The lack of a father only gave Baca a greater determination to become a loving father for his family and to live life the best he can (Baca, 6, 2001). As a young child, Baca was afraid of his father’s temperament, but Baca still yearned his father’s love “I want to go to him and hug him but I’m afraid.” (Baca, 144, 2001).

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In discussing his father’s “terrible life” he goes on to say that his father

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The poem “A Story” by Li-Young Lee depicts the complex relationship between a boy and his father when the boy asks his father for a story and he can’t come up with one. When you’re a parent your main focus is to make your child happy and to meet all the expectations your child meets. When you come to realize a certain expectation can’t satisfy the person you love your reaction should automatically be to question what would happen if you never end up satisfying them. When the father does this he realizes the outcome isn’t what he’d hope for. He then finally realizes that he still has time to meet that expectation and he isn’t being rushed.

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In my younger and more tender years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. He ingrained in me the saying, “What you do not ask for you do not get.” He has repeated this statement repeatedly but we’ve always been unusually distant in the sense that he and I understood that I would have to be captain of the ship that is my life. As a young boy I was naturally reserved and did not like taking risks. Throughout my childhood I tried to integrate my Dad’s aphorism into my life.

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