Summary Of Arm Wrestling With My Father By Brad Manning

The poem “Wordsmith” by Susan Young follows the speaker watching their father as he constructs their house. Throughout the poem, their bond as father and child is made abundantly clear that they both love each other and value time spent together. Firstly, neither of them explicitly state how much they care but rather convey their familial feelings through actions instead. The speaker only watches their father “from the sidelines” (8) as they “watch with something akin to awe” (3) and never expresses their admiration aloud. Likewise, their father hardly outright states his affection but does it through working. The speaker understands this as they compare “all of the empty crevices” to “the words [the father] did not know how to say” (17). Another

One of the most difficult, yet rewarding roles is that of a parent. The relationship between and parent and child is so complex and important that a parents relationship with her/his child can affect the relationship that the child has with his/her friends and lovers. A child will watch their parents and use them as role models and in turn project what the child has learned into all of the relationship that he child will have. The way a parent interacts with his/her child has a huge impact on the child’s social and emotional development. Such cases of parent and child relationships are presented in Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” and Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”. While Roethke and Plath both write about a dynamic between a child-father relationship that seems unhealthy and abusive, Plath writes about a complex and tense child-father relationship in which the child hates her father, whereas Roethke writes about a complex and more relaxed child-father relationship in which the son loves his father. Through the use of tone, rhyme, meter, and imagery, both poems illustrate different child-father relationships in which each child has a different set of feelings toward their father.

Have you ever been separated from your dad for a while? We already know that the dad’s love cannot be compared with another thing in the world. The relationship between a father and his son is one of the most important things in life. In the novel “When the Emperor Was Divine” by Julie Otsuka shows the relationship assists in making a boy recognize the love of his father while he is in the internment camp for a long time. We may see through the third chapter as the father and his boy encourage their self-confidence to overcome their own experiences of being separated from each other. We are able to see how this relationship become strong and how it is linked for the boy’s feelings. Through this essay I would like to prove the importance of the father and his son, and how they illustrated this love in the novel “When the Emperor was Divine”.

Brad Manning’s “Arm Wrestling with My Father” he indicates that the physical contact between himself and his father is a representation of their relationship. When Manning is a boy his father, and he participates in arm wrestling regularly. Of course, Manning being a child loses but all he does is giggle. Manning’s relationship with his father as a boy is playful and fun. In his teenage years, he did not laugh around his father anymore. His relationship with his father is never emotional, like a bond a mother and a son has. The relationship is strictly physical. Mannings father helps him with lacrosse but never goes to any of his orchestra concerts or helps him with homework: “But at those times I could just feel how hard he was trying to

Arm Wrestling with My Father Change is inevitable, and often leads to emotional repercussions. Brad Manning expresses this idea in his coming-to-age essay “Arm Wrestling with My Father,” in which he traces the evolution of his relationship with his father. Using rhetorical devices such as repetition, selection of detail and analogy, Manning further proves his ambivalence towards his and his father’s impending roles reversals. Manning begins the essay by describing a regular arm wrestling match with his father, and uses repetition while describing the match “…is what he always said…he would always control the outcome… Dad would always win; I always had to lose” (156).

“If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.” This quotation by James Arthur Baldwin helps to bring about one of the main points of his essay, “Notes of a Native Son.” Baldwin’s composition was published in 1955, and based mostly around the World War II era. This essay was written about a decade after his father’s death, and it reflected back on his relationship with his father. At points in the essay, Baldwin expressed hatred, love, contempt, and pride for his father, and Baldwin broke down this truly complex relationship in his analysis. In order to do this, he wrote the essay as if he were in the past, still with his father,

Family relations are complex, but none may be as difficult to navigate as the bond that exists between a father and his son. Even though the son becomes angry and displeased with his father, he is always able to come back to him, revealing the cyclic nature and the impacts of

Although single parenthood is on the rise in homes today, children still often have a father role in their life. It does not matter who the part is filled by: a father, uncle, older brother, grandfather, etc...; in almost all cases, those relationships between the father (figure) and child have lasting impacts on the youth the rest of their lives. In “I Wanted to Share My Father’s World,” Jimmy Carter tells the audience no matter the situation with a father, hold onto every moment.

What would be a better expression of father’s love? Squeezing each other’s fists till strips of tendons bulge out? Or wrapping arms around each other for a warm embrace? In “Arm Wrestling with My Father,” Brad Manning experiences a change in his father’s expression of love; from arm wrestling, to a hug. In his story, Manning successfully depicts a boy who admired his father’s masculine strength and grows up to also respect his tenderness and gradually learns to replace his father’s role. His depiction is displayed through alternative comparison, sentence length, analogy, and diction.

In both stories “Arm Wrestling with My Father,” and “Shooting Dad,” the authors use different rhetorical strategies that allow them to exemplify their actual feelings of how they relate to their father’s. They also employ similar rhetorical devices yet are used differently. “Ours had always been a physical relationship, I suppose, one determined by athleticism and strength.” Manning emphasizes how his relationship with his father is very physical and nonverbal. Manning describes the differences in perception of his father’s arms, symbolizing the change in their relationship that was about to take place. Whereas when Vowell states, “if you were passing by the house where I grew up during my teenage years and it happened to be before Election Day, you wouldn’t have needed to come inside to see that it was house divided,” Vowell looks back on her childhood to explain that

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.

The composer of My Father’s Axe, Tim Winton, explores the universal themes of male identity in the modern age, throughout his short story. He utilises many relatable scenarios throughout his short story which conveys the stereotypical male identity in today’s society. “Jamie says he doesn’t know where the axe is and I believe him; he won’t chop wood anymore. Elaine hasn’t seen it; it’s men’s business, she says”. The composer is establishing the notion of an axe being a tool which is typically related to the male gender. Tim Winton symbolises the axe as a tool which requires great physical strength, a trait which the male identity are often expected to possess. The composer also depicts the male identity as the person who is solely responsible for the functionality of a family, “He left me with the responsibility of fueling the home” and “My mother called me the man of the house”. “I saw my father ball his handkerchief up and bite on it to muffle his sobs”. The composer’s use of imagery visualises the father’s attempts to hide his tears. This portrays the male identity as generally being subconscious of their emotions. Crying is an action often stereotypically represented as a weakness found mainly in the female identity, and not the male counterpart, therefore men often try to hide these “feminine” feelings to retain their sense of masculinity. This notion suggest

The controversial poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke has spurred passionate academic debate from professors, scholars, and students alike; the imagery, syntax, and diction of the poem clearly support the interpretation that Roethke writes “My Papa’s Waltz” to reminisce on a bittersweet memory with his father. His unclear commemoration has sparked a divide on what the true purpose of the poem is. Some may argue the poem’s purpose is to shine light on the subject of abuse, whereas others believe the father and son were sharing a moment while “roughly playing.” However, the more one examines this piece of literature, it becomes undeniable that the poem portrays a scene of a toxic father-son relationship. Although there are a

A father and son relationship is very important. It is the foundation for boys to become men. The article, “Why the Father Wound Matter: Consequences for Male Mental Health and the Father-Son Relationship”, by Eric D. Miller explains the concept of a father wound that can manifest in males due to a father neglecting or abusing them. Miller stresses that by becoming fathers’, men can overcome father wounds. He touches upon the idea of masculinity, and how it can be a factor to why there is sometimes a distant relationship between a father and a son. The “A Father’s Call: Father-Son Relationship Survival of Critical Life Transitions”, by Ivory Achebe Toldson and Ivory Lee Toldson explains the relationship between a father and a son from adolescent into adulthood. Lee who was the father describes his struggles through a divorce and how he stayed connected to his son no matter what occurred. Lee’s son Achehbe is also featured in the article and expresses the rough childhood he went through without his father being directly in his life. Together these two articles show that a father is essential to the raising of a boy because without one many form father wounds along with emotional problems.

The decision to be like my dad, to make him proud, molded my childhood. Being a man wasn’t so simple - the body language had to meet the standards of manhood while acting against my own innate desire to express my feelings and emotions. I was afraid of crying as it wasn’t something my dad practiced. Whenever I had the urge to express my feelings, I would repress it.