The Use Of Flashbacks In Louise Erdrich's The Red Convertible

The mind’s imagination can deliver a delightful escape or bring terrifying pain and suffering. James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” displays Walter Mitty as a man in a miserable scenario creating his own euphoric world. While in Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Convertible '' the narrator's brother Henry returns from Vietnam mentally astray, and faces horrors from his imagination as he relives past events from war. Thurber and Erdrich’s stories share many similarities whether it's the usage of flashbacks, symbolism, or even the characterization that connects the two very different stories. Flashbacks are used in both Thurber and Erdrich’s stories where it displays the mind's escape from reality into an adventurous or haunting setting.

In order to escape from all that, he sends himself into daydreams where he experiences more climactic events like when “he sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep. He began fingering a delicate row of glistening dials” imagining himself as a surgeon (Thurber). Thurber uses these little flashbacks throughout the entire story as Mitty constantly sends himself into a dream. Erdrich also makes use of flashbacks through Leyman, as he revisits the painful moments of his brother's return from war. Leyman revisits his most upsetting day after viewing a picture of him and his brother, as the “picture is very clear in [his] mind. It was so sunny that day Henry had to squint against the sun” as he goes on to describe the day he lost his brother (Erdrich). This flashback to the day of Henry’s death brings into the story the impact of the moment and shows how the narrator feels about him. While both authors use flashbacks to demonstrate the mental states of their characters, they both have different tones. As Mitty’s daydreams are a more positive manner in a dream where he wants to be, whereas Lyman's flashback is to a day he hates to remember, bringing him back to the

In Erdrich’s story, the convertible is something the two brothers worked on, enjoyed, and spent time together in, overall serving as symbolism for youth and innocence. While disclosing ways to help bring back Henry from his declining mental state with his family, Lyman “thought about the car…[he] thought the car might bring back the old Henry back somehow”(Erdrich). The car acts as the source of innocence that Henry carried with him before his deployment, Lyman feels that working on the car would bring that back. Thurber explores symbolism as well as Mitty going into daydreams during his everyday life that is often triggered by his surroundings and demonstrate something Mitty longs for in his life. When the story starts off with Mitty as a commander of a naval craft and “stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials'' taking control of the situation (Thurber). Mitty’s dream as a commander symbolizes his want for more control in his own life whether its decisions or capabilities, as the scene transitions into his reckless driving. The authors of these two stories use symbolism to portray the theme and messages within the story. While Thurbers faces a symbolism using the characters' mental encounters, Erdrich focuses on a physical object. Lyman demonstrates this when he describes how “before we had