Henry And Lyman Character Analysis

The car was in good shape before Henry went off and joined the Marines but Lyman wanted it in perfect condition for when his brother arrived at home. The red convertible to Lyman is everything that he wants his relationship with his brother to be once he returns. Lyman wants everything to go back to the way things were like the summer before Henry left. When Henry finally does arrive at home, however, Lyman describes him as being "very different" and "jumpy and mean"(367). Henry no longer seems to have any interest in the car or in Lyman any longer. In desperation, to retrieve his old brother, Lyman goes out one night when Henry had gone out and "did a number" on the red convertible(367). This desperate act of Lyman is in order to try to bring the brothers together. Lyman feels that since they were connected through the red convertible in the past that it would bring them together now. When Henry sees the car messed up he becomes upset and instead of bringing the brothers together Henry becomes fanatically obsessed with fixing the red convertible. This event in the story shows how the war has changed their relationship from close knit to distant. However, once Henry gets the car fixed up he asks Lyman to go for a drive once again showing how the car and their relationship are hand in hand. The red convertible continues to bring the brothers together even in the worst of times.

From this point on, Henry did not even look at the car that he and Lyman owned together. Obviously, they did not travel anymore or went anywhere together as before. This bothered Lyman, and attempting to bring him back to his own self, Lyman destroys the car and waits for Henry to find it. When Henry finds it, he begins fixing it, and as months passed by, he begins to act a little different. He was not as jumpy and disturbed as he was when he returned from the war. He finishes with the car, leaving it almost as good as it was before. He invites Lyman to go on a ride as they used to do before. They arrived at the river and begin drinking beer and laughing together. All of a sudden, Henry says, “got to cool me off” and troughs himself in the river, and let the current take him. Before he was gone he said, “My boots are filling”. He probably meant that he was tired of living, waiting for his dreams and hopes to be fulfilled and being stuck in two different cultures. After Henry says this, he finally disappears, separating what was once a relationship between two brothers.

Lyman tried to bring Henry out of his depressed state by having Henry work on their convertible. After days of working on the car, Lyman saw a change in Henry, they decided to take a joy ride together to the river to just relax. Lyman was under the impression that his brother had come back to his normal self. However, that was not the case. Henry decided to jump into the river saying "got to cool me off" (Erdrich, 114. Henry was really trying to commit suicide. In a normal voice Lyman heard Henry say "my boots are filling" (Erdrich, 114). At this point, Lyman could no longer see Henry and Lyman didn’t rush to try to save Henry. Lyman came to terms that Henry was gone, so he sent the car into the water to be with its rightful owner. This is a reference to the beginning of the story when Lyman mentioned that his brother became the rightful owner “until his boots filled with water on a windy night”(Erdrich, 103).

The relationship of brothers usually lasts forever, but in Louise Erdrich’s short story “The Red Convertible”, the relationship of the main characters Lyman and Henry takes a turn. Erdrich takes her audience through the experiences these brothers face and how they must come to terms that their relationship has changed. Knowing that it will most likely never be the same both Lyman and Henry try to fix their relationship until eventually one falls because of the experiences he faced in life. While Lyman may think the red convertible will save his and Henry’s relationship, Erdrich makes it clear that it will not through the characterization of the brothers, the plot of the story, and the symbolism she uses to tell her story.

Lyman soon realized he was wrong. The war had torn Henry to the point that he would stare lifelessly at a television screen for hours on end. He had not said more than a few words to Lyman for some time. Angered, Lyman purposefully damages the red convertible to get the attention of his brother. The damaging of the car represents the anger felt by Lyman that the relationship with his brother had been destroyed by the war. By destroying the car, Lyman is metaphorically changing the condition of the red convertible to match that of their brotherly bond. “Now I don’t even know if I can get it to start again, let alone get it anywhere near its old condition.” (Erdrich 328) Henry states about the car, symbolizing his feelings towards their relationship.

Henry returns from the war damaged not unlike the car after Lyman tries to destroy it. The relation ship between the brothers will never return to its previous state just as the car will never be the same. The car now comes to signify the change in the brother’s relationship. When Henry drowns himself in the river, Lyman lets the car go with them. Henry knows life will never be the same and neither will his feelings about the car. The car will now only trigger the raw emotions of his brother’s transformation and his death, instead of the carefree life he once had with a close brother. The car comes to symbolize death and the death of the close relationship between the to brothers. When Lyman lets go of the car, he is also letting go of his innocence.

Both Erdrich’s, “The Red Convertible”, and O'Brien's, “The Things They Carried” reflect the effects of psychological trauma left by war; specifically, the Vietnam War. In Erdrich’s piece, she uses the red convertible as a metaphor for Henry. The fact that the two brothers purchased the convertible together is a serves to symbolize their bond. Yet, when Henry returns from his tenure as a soldier, his mental health has deteriorated into an apparently depressive state. I believe that Lyman’s act of wrecking the car represents how the war has devastated Henry’s emotional state. In Henry’s attempt to restore the car, he is indirectly trying to mend himself. Indeed we see that in his effort to do so, he exhibits signs indicative of his previous

“The Red Convertible” demonstrates the cause and effect of past memories with present experiences, particularly the effect of war. The memories shared between the brothers before Henry’s draft begins with the purchase of a red convertible. Both of the brothers equally purchased the red convertible with their earned income. The red convertible personified the brother’s

In addition, the story’s focuses on changes that has happened to Henry, Lyman, and their relationship which shows more symbols when the story gets deeper. The car was mentioned at the very beginning of the story. Lyman said that he was the “first to drive a convertible on his reservation.” And “of course it was red” (Erdrich 25). At the very beginning, both

In the beginning of the story the author writes “I owned that car along with my brother Henry Junior. We owned it together until his boots filled with water on a windy night and he bought out my share.” (1073) In the end of the book Lyman pushed the red convertible into the river and there must be a reason why he did so. Lyman had been trying so hard to try and bring his brother Henry to be the way he had been before he left for the war. When Henry’s boots filled with water and he disappeared on that night, he died in the river. Lyman and Henry bought that vehicle together. Lyman even tried using it to break Henry out of his messed up emotional state. It seemed like he was experiencing symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. “They got

“The Red Convertible” is a short story that tells the reader how Henry and Lyman have a bond that is altered due to war. After the war, Henry is not in the right state of mind. He ends up drowning in a river. The author starts to foreshadow in the first paragraph. Lyman states, “We owned it together until his boots filled with water on a windy night and he bought out my share” (Erdrich, 330).

Lyman frequently writes to Henry, who is in Vietnam, and tries to remind him of the relationship that they share by saying, “I wrote him back several times, even though I didn’t know if those letters would get through. I kept him informed all about the car. Most of the time I had it up on blocks in the yard or half taken apart, because that long trip did a number on its hood” (Erdrich 311). Lyman felt that even if Henry was far away, if they could still communicate then maybe it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal. Mentioning the car to him in the letters represents that Lyman is trying to jog Henry’s memory of his brother and the relationship that they had before Henry left.

The Matters Morris Must Overcome for personal growth As people walk through life, we undergo many life experiences, gaining better understanding of who we are as individuals. A common saying that we become wiser with age. Becoming wise can be described as showing knowledge from learning and experiencing many things, also showing good sense of reasoning (webster). The Matter with Morris written by David Bergen, loosely based in Winnipeg, the story is told in the first-person point of view Morris Schutt, as the title of the novel suggests there are Matters that Morris must attend to in his life.

The families of the main characters in both stories are broken families. Henry and Lyman’s father in The Red Convertible is absent from the story and it is assumed that he has been gone for their entire lives. They also live with their mother and sister. Henry’s return from the war causes the relationship between Henry and Lyman to suffer. While Henry was fighting in the war, Lyman took care of the car and kept him updated through letters. He doesn’t even acknowledge the car when he returns and this upsets Lyman. Lyman messes up the car one day to get his brother to work on it, and it works. He spends a long time fixing the car until it looks like it did before but he still doesn’t change. Lyman had thought that wrecking the car might bring

Lyman and Henry really have a true connection with each other. The car they bought together without really thinking twice about it and they shared it really just shows us that the brothers have a stronger bond then most because they were both broke they spent every dollar they had on the car, both of them. Another example in the story that shows us the bond they have is when they pick up Susie the hitchhiker and they ask her where to? And she says Alaska. The two brothers almost immediately say lets go, no second questions and in the new car they just got. They are both in sync with each other. The trip is really important to the relationship of Lyman and Henry because they get there and they stay for a little bit where the unpredictable growth of plants is just crazy and the cold weather but they bond through it and Susie’s family puts up a tent in the backyard for them. Just in the matter of how they both are just friendly buys them a ticket to stay with Susie’s family, the kids also just are always playing with them, that shows us that they are really great people to be around because of the friendly bond they have with each other. The fact