Character Analysis Of Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night In Suck City

The greatest heroes in human history, whether real or fictional, are often portrayed as lone-wolves, people who neither require nor want help from others. Because of their greatness, they have no need for help from others. But that is entirely untrue. Every president has a vice president, every superhero has a sidekick. And if even those people need help, then of course a normal man such as Nick Flynn does to. In Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, by Nick Flynn, Flynn details his and his absent father’s experiences, as they dance around each other for years before slowly developing a relationship. Jonathan is portrayed as a good-for-nothing drunk, one who believes that he will be a famous writer in the future. Nick unknowingly follows in

These people force Nick to become more of a helpful and stable person when he cares for them at the shelter. Nick follows in his father’s footsteps in a lot of ways, often drinking and using drugs at a young age. For much of his young life, he has no one to help him get better, and he is quite unstable. One person who truly enables him to act like his father is his mother’s boyfriend, Travis. Nick comments that Travis, an ex-soldier, is “fun to have around, in a frenzied sort of way...he....goes off to hot-wire someone else’s boat...We knew the boat was stolen, even though he said it was a friend’s. We knew there’d be trouble if we were caught but we went anyway. His impunity thrills me, I mistake it for fearlessness”(80). Travis is quite a bad influence on Nick, as Nick believes that Travis is a role model, a person to look up to, because what he is doing is fearless. However, Travis is really just stealing boats and wasting his life, and he is encouraging Nick to pursue the same type of life. It is only as Nick matures that he is able to find people who can help him. Early in Nick’s career at Pine Street, Nick writes in a log,“I was called to the fourth floor to rescue Isaac Clegg, who not only fell out of bed, but had the bed fall on him. Upon extrication Isaac was found to have a cut above his eye, and was brought to the clinic for a look...I helped Isaac to

I don’t have similar experiences to him, as my father is very present in my life. But there are certainly many examples in history of people like Nick who suffered because of absent or dead parents but were able to mature and become better people because of those who supported them. The current US President Barack Obama was raised by a single mother, as his father went back to Africa when Obama was two. His grandparents were also instrumental in helping him grow up, and it was only when he lived in Hawaii as a teenager was he able to experience cultures in a climate of mutual respect. And here Obama is today, as the first African-American president of the United States. In a more fictional context, Harry Potter’s parents were killed when he was a very young age. He struggled for years to achieve his full potential as a child, and it was only through the help of his friends Hermione, and Ron that he was able to fulfill his great potential and defeat Voldemort. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are plenty of stories of people like Jonathan, who have so much potential but see it go to waste because of friends who don’t push him to aspire for more. Athletes are especially culpable in this respect, for example Johnny Manziel, a promising young quarterback, has basically destroyed his career because his friends let him drink and have fun as opposed to making sure he focuses on his game. It is human nature to seek the