In Diane Williams short story “All American”, Williams uses significant diction throughout the story to discuss a woman who struggles expressing different types of love towards other people. Her tactic to express her love is to be forceful with her relationships; even towards her own family. Love is a rollercoaster of emotions, sacrifice, and a way of expressing a person’s true feelings in different forms.
The word force is often used throughout this story in many forms and tenses when describing the unidentified woman, and it could not be any more accurate. In the second paragraph of the story, Williams mentions that “When she thinks of the man, she thinks force, and then whoever has the man already is her enemy- which is the man’s wife”
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Williams is discussing the woman receiving a phone call from her brother who called her “darling,” and she compares that feeling to the hatred she has for the man’s wife. The woman states “I have to force myself to love the ones I am supposed to love, and then I have to force myself on the ones I am not supposed to love” (pg. 264). This statement reveals that this woman does not want to be called those types of things by her brother; she wants a man to love her like her brother does. The narrator re-surfaces an incident between the woman and her sister in the back of the family vehicle concerning force. The woman admits “I got my first real glimpse of this kind of thing when I was still a girl trying to force myself on my sister” (pg. 265). The woman previously stated that she forces herself on the ones she is not supposed to love, and she is forcing herself on her own sister. She is using her sister to fill the void of emptiness that she felt when she was younger, because she had no idea how to love someone. During the same incident the woman reflects on her actions she committed as a child and stated “I remember knowing then that I was applying force and was getting away with it” (pg. 265). This realization is the prime reason for the woman’s behavior as an adult; using force to get what she