Love Honor and Pity

This story starts with a Vietnamse father coming to visit his son in Iowa.His son is in his last year of the Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop. Which we first were introducted to in the Stone Reader movie. There are only three days left before his final story is due. But he is having a lot of trouble writing. He is struggleing with what to write about. The son’s life is king of a wreck at the moment. On page 7 he shares how unrelaxed his life is. “There is a subterranean bar in a hotel next to my work, and every night I would wander down and slump on a barstool and pretedn I didn’t want the bartender to make small talk. He was only a bit older than me, and I came to envy his ease, his confidence that any given situation was merely temporary.” I can really understand this. Much of the time I make a bigger deal out of things that don’t really matter. I wish I could just forget about the small things. It seems that the father coming is sort of uncomfortable for his son. He hadn’t even told his girlfriend that his dad was coming. We then discover that his father had been abusive to him when I was younger. I believe that the son was deliberately trying to get as far away as possible from his childhood. So he would write about things such as “lesbian vampires.” But never would he write about his Vietnamese culture and upbringing. This is even when some of his peers heavily tried to get him to write this type of “ethnic literature”.

But the son was unable to come up with a good story to write about. So finally he gave in and started to write. He used some stories that his father had shared with him. Stories about how he had survived a massacre. But his father read his story and finds many “mistakes” in it. Therefore his father determines that he should open up to his son more about his past. The son states that he would like to write this story down. But on page 24 the father shares his thoughts on this. “He was silent for a long time. Then he said, ‘Only you’ll remember. I’ll remember. They will read and clap their hands and forget.’ For once, he was not smiling. ‘Sometimes it’s better to forget no?” I don’t really agree with this. I feel that people who have good stories should share them with others so that other people can learn from other’s lessons. But his father does sound serious about this.

Next the son writes down everything that his father shares with him. He takes 45 pages of notes. Then that night before the paper is due he writes his story. When he wakes up he finds that his father has gone for a walk with the story. On page 27 the son states how his father will react to his story. “He would read it, with his book learned English, and he would recognize himself in a new way. He would recognize me. He would see how powerful was his experience, how valuable his suffering – how I had made it speak for more than itself. He would be pleased with me.”

Since the paper was due at noon the son goes looking for his father and the paper. He then finds his father with a homeless man. With a sickening feeling in his heart he realizes that his father has burned the paper. But now for the first time he seems to see his father how he really is.

My thoughts on this are that the son should have made a better attempt to understand his father’s feelings. Even after his father had requested that this story be only between them the son still went and tried to get a good grade and possibly money. He never thought about how terrible the things his father shared were to live through.