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The Role Of Tragedies In Francis Phelan's Ironweed

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There were many tragedies in the book Ironweed. Francis Phelan faced a lot of struggles throughout the novel and he has had to make many hard decisions of his life based on the tragedies that he faced throughout his life. These tragedies changed his life dramatically and are the reason that he is who he is today. Two of the big tragedies he faced in the book are the death of his son and hitting the striker in the head with a baseball. The biggest tragedy in the novel is when Francis drops his infant son while he was drunk. He dropped his son and his son ended up dying from being dropped. This caused Francis to leave his family for many years and desert everyone who loved him because he thought everyone hated him. This was a bad decision because Annie did not end up telling anyone about Francis dropping the baby and no one loved him any less due to what he did. Instead he was gone all those years and lost all the time spent with his family that he could have …show more content…

It was partially accidental, but he was a very good thrower due to baseball and found the perfect rock that looked similar in shape and size to hit his target where he aimed. Francis hit the man in the head and the man instantly died. This incident caused soldiers to fire at the mob, which kills two bystanders due to Francis’ actions. After that incident, Francis was on the run and took off in a trolley car to escape and eventually came back when he thought he could return without being thrown in jail. It is believed that the killing of the striker is what caused Francis to become more violent. He has killed many people throughout the novel and Harold Allen was just the start of what causes Francis to kill people and not just run away in a fight. Francis had a lot of guilt for the people he killed, but his actions deserved consequences instead of backing out of the fights he was engaged

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