Conversation with My Father

A Conversation with My Father, by Grace Paley This is a story about storytelling. The narrator, a writer and her aged, ill father are discussing the narrator 's style of story writing. The Protagonist in the story is the narrator. After reading the story, no gender is given of the narrator, only assuming by the tone of the story to be a female. The other major character in the story is the narrator sick aging antagonist father, who seems to be on his death bed. Throughout the story, Paley plays on the story theme of the way real life should be represented in fiction. The major conflict between the two resides in their different experiences of life, and therefore, different expectations for fiction points of view. Paley shows us the father knows he is dying and has a grim look on life, while the narrator is still young and full of life giving her a very hopeful point of view. “A Conversation with My Father” recounts a discussion between the daughter who is the narrator, and her bedridden father, who is eighty-six year old intelligent, yet sick and dying. While the narrator visits her father, the father makes a request and wants his daughter, the narrator to tell a story that is simple, "Just recognizable people and then write down what happened to them next. It seems “ The narrator doesn 't like telling stories that takes all hope away”. To the narrator “Everyone is real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life." Because she wants to please her father, the narrator agrees, and tells a short story no longer than a one-paragraph tale about a woman and her teenage son, both heroin’s addict users, who live in Manhattan. The son later quits, but his mother cannot kick the habit. Her son abandons her and she is left alone in the city. The narrator father immediately rejects the story. The father tells his daughter that she misunderstood him on purpose. To the father, he claims and believes that she left out all the important details, such as descriptions, occupations, and family. The father asks questions, attempting to fill in details of the story that he believes are important. The narrator agrees to tell the story again. The daughter retells the story for the second time, adding more details and provides an unhappy conclusion ending. "The End." The father still unhappy, and is discouraged by this new version, but he is pleased that she put the words “The End” in it. To the father it is the end of the woman as a person. But the father is saddened as he cannot understand, “How could his daughter, the writer, leave the mother in the story in such an abandoned state?”. The daughter discusses the story with her father, stating that her protagonist is only forty and still has lots of things she could do with her life. As they discuss the ending, the father still disagrees, becomes exasperated with his daughter as she simply chooses not to recognized the tragedy of her protagonist‘ life.

At this point the theme of different points of view becomes apparent. The narrator likes short detail-less stories because they do not take all hope away. There was a woman. Followed by a plot , can take away all hope. The narrator believes there is always hope which becomes apparent at the end of the story. In the other hand, the father does not believe this new ending and insists the woman in the story will slide back to her bad habits since she has no character. Paley, the author seems to be playing heavily off the different points of view toward the end of the story. Paley made us aware in the story that the narrator acknowledges that her father is sick, but makes it seem like the narrator is holding out for hope. The author is showing us the narrator is young and is full of hope. Informing us the father is elderly and sick. This story concerns in dealing with death. The father sees that all of life 's endings are tragic. The father has an interest in the details of living and in how a life plays out. His conversation with his daughter is really about his own dying. But the narrator (we assume she is a daughter, although the first-person narrator could be a son) refuses to acknowledge that this is really the issue. He wants her to recognize that he is dying, and that this is a tragedy for both of them. She prefers to keep all the narrative options (endings) open. In effect, however, their "conversation" allows them to negotiate a mutual (unarticulated) narrative about the father 's dying. Analogies can be drawn with the negotiated narratives that patients and their physicians and other caregivers reach. The sublet symbolism really make you think. While Paley kept the story short, the devises she used keep you thinking for quite some time.

Works Cited Paley, Grace. A Conversation With my Father. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 9th ed. Eds. Allison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, Kelly J. Mays. New York, 2005. 31-34

Cited: Paley, Grace. A Conversation With my Father. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 9th ed. Eds. Allison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, Kelly J. Mays. New York, 2005. 31-34