Relationships Between Parents & Children

In Ethan CaninÆs ôThe Year of Getting to Know us,ö we are provided with a short story in which the author is disturbed, in retrospect, by noticing aspects of his fatherÆs uncommunicativeness, which he disliked, in his own behavior. At one point in the story the father and son take a trip. The father tells him they are on this trip because he wants his son to know him ôbecause one day youÆre going to grow up and then youÆre going to be me,ö (Canin, p. 42). Though the son longs to know his father more and they seldom play baseball or other activities fathers and sons share, the son only comes to a better understanding of his

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views as loveÆs ôausterity,ö are necessary when being responsible for others, (Hayden, p. 1). Perhaps the speaker has children of his own now. He understands that though he could not appreciate his fatherÆs actions and demeanor at the time, love is often demonstrated as a lonely austerity when one sacrifices their own comfort for the comfort of others. In this manner, the speaker comes to appreciate his fatherÆs actions and behavior much more than he did as a child, though his repetition of ôWhat did I knowö seems to imply he regrets it took him so long to understand, (Hayden, p. 1). In both CaninÆs short story and HaydenÆs poem we see sons who initially cannot appreciate their fatherÆs behavior or communication or, rather, what appears to them as a lack of communication. In Jamaica KincaidÆs brief story ôGirl,ö we see that a lack of communication is hardly the case. The mother in this story is traditional and ethnically oriented. She is a Christian and subscribes to the African religion of obeah, one that posits an inferior role for women compared to men. Instead of a lack of communication, her adolescent daughter is deluged with a constant barrage of advice, tips, and lessons from her mother about how to be, how to work,
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Approximate Word count = 1297
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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