Comparison of Two Short Stories by Tobias Wolff and T.C Boyle

The father’s drinking and the mother’s temper result from the emotional impact of the devastating accident. The family eventually had to move to other city because they could not bear living their anymore because of the car accident. Not only did the accident affect the mom and dad, it affected the children.

The relationship between the two fathers and the two sons is a very important theme in this book. Because of their different backgrounds, Reb Saunders and David Malters approached raising a child from two totally different perspectives.

Because the father was so involved with himself, he did not make the time or put the effort to develop a proper relationship with his son.

In his use of characterization, he descriptively talks about the different states his mother undergoes in her illness and the surrounding events and emotions elicited by her continuous downfall, readers experience a feeling of sympathy for Wolff in his circumstance. This also brings light and support to his obscure, perhaps unethical, reasoning that his mother's life, along with those who find

Powder, a short story written by Tobias Wolff, is about a boy and his father on a Christmas Eve outing. As the story unfolds, it appears to run deeper than only a story about a boy and his father on a simple adventure in the snow. It is an account of a boy and his father’s relationship, or maybe the lack of one. Powder is narrated by a grown-up version of the boy. In this tale, the roles of the boy and his father emerge completely opposite than what they are supposed to be but may prove to be entirely different from the reader’s first observation.

Several things that happen in this book are a result of what the father and son do in their relationships for

One theme in The Road is paternal love; this is the relationship between the father and his son. Their bond plays a powerful part in the novel and impacts the decisions made during their journey. The two protagonists remain unnamed in the book, giving their familial relationship their full identity. This makes their relationship relatable to any parent and child bond outside of the novel.

Both “Arm Wrestling with My Father” and “Shooting Dad” written by Brad Manning and Sarah Vowell, respectively, portrays a damaged and rough relationship that a son and/or daughter holds with his father. Although they both find themselves struggling, they are dealing with different things, Manning is dealing with a physical bounding, while Vowell finds herself handling a more emotional and communicative type of bonding. Eventually, both characters find themselves in a mature relationship over time. The characters had similarities and also differences with their respective father. Throughout the stories, both authors dig into the relationship between child and father and how it can be shaped and changed over time.

In this story the love the father demonstrates trying to win back his family by taking his son on a ski trip shows how the father loved his son very much. His dad fought for the right to spend some time with his son. He would not give up until the son’s mom let him take his

This is represented and forcing all of the ideas of his mother and family out and he wants to forget the mishaps that they encounter.

Both are small, close-knit fishing communities in the east coast of Canada. Similarly, they revolve around an aspect of tragedy, the looming threat of death, danger, and sadness. In “The Boat”, the father dies suddenly and brutally, which haunts his son for the rest of his life. In “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood”, the young boys mother and stepfather are killed in a car accident and it leaves him (seemingly) with no present parents left. This breaks the grandparents hearts and leaves them feeling broken and lonely, holding onto the young boy who is all they have left. Both fathers’ seem to do what they feel is in the best interest of their sons. One can take the aspect of the father in “The Boat” as committing suicide to release he son from the chains of the small town, just as the father in “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood” finally meets his son and feels the need to leave him in the comfort of his grandparents for the child’s

how much of a man he was. After he hit his father, he felt a sense of pride as if he won a prize of some sort. The act was more selfish than selfless being that he was not thanked for it. After the incident, he looks at his sisters for validation for his actions but he has never seen the difference between them or separate the roles of them from their mother. His misogynistic views are passed down from his father and this is due to his immaturity and lack of exposure to the independent world.

The role of a father could be a difficult task when raising a son. The ideal relationship between father and son perhaps may be; the father sets the rules and the son obeys them respectfully. However it is quite difficult to balance a healthy relationship between father and son, because of what a father expects from his son. For instance in the narratives, “Death of a Salesman,” and “Fences” both Willy and Troy are fathers who have a difficult time in earning respect from their sons, and being a role model for them. Between, “Death of a Salesman,” and “Fences,” both protagonists, Willy and Troy both depict the role of a father in distinctive ways; however, in their struggle, Willy is the more sympathetic of the two.

Problems that comes up in this case study appears to child; physical, emotional, mental, verbal and personal abuse, along with environmental factors that created the initial “family secret,” that Dave talks about throughout the book. His parents have their own personal conflicted problems, along with their abused in substances like alcohol. The family social economic status seems to range in the lower class, as Dave’ father occupation was a firefighter and his mother’s occupation is unknown. Physical abuse of children is a nonaccidental injury inflicted on a child (Crosson-Tower, p.180, 2013). Dave’s mother made him sit at the bottom of the stairs with his hands under his bottom, starved and slept with no blanket in the cold basement. His mother’s alcoholic problems made him, his mother’s sole target for frustration and anger, basically as his mother’s punching bag. Neglectful mother were more than likely to used words like shame and sad more than non-neglectful mother during the study (Camilo, Garrido & Calheiros, 2016). Dave’s mother called him “it,” while his

place nearly forty years apart. After a second read, however, it was easy to notice a distant