Weekly Reflection on "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice"

• ambiguously: open to or having several possible meanings or interpretations; equivocal: an ambiguous answer.
• gaunter: extremely thin and bony; haggard and drawn, as from great hunger, weariness, or torture; emaciated.

"The field are glass, I thought."

When the narrator first mentioned this quote it seemed like he was going to use this line to start off his story.

• dactyl: Prosody . a foot of three syllables, one long followed by two short in quantitative meter, or one stressed followed by two unstressed in accentual meter, as in gently and humanly. 2. a finger or toe.
• equably: free from many changes or variations; uniform: an equable climate; an equable temperament. 2. uniform in operation or effect, as laws.
• striated: marked with striae; furrowed; striped; streaked.

"The fields are glass..."

When he mentioned it again, I thought that it was a line he would use throughout the story that would show up numerous times in his story, but it was never used again after this line because his storyline changed.

• metronome: a mechanical or electrical instrument that makes repeated clicking sounds at an adjustable pace, used for marking rhythm,especially in practicing music.
• deftly: dexterous; nimble; skillful; clever: deft hands; a deft mechanic.
• exorbitant: exceeding the bounds of custom, propriety, or reason, especially in amount or extent; highly excessive: to charge an exorbitant price;exorbitant luxury.
• doggerel: a. comic or burlesque, and usually loose or irregular in measure. b. rude; crude; poor.
• verities: the state or quality of being true; accordance with fact or reality: to question the verity of a statement. 2. something that is true, as a principle, belief, idea, or statement: the eternal verities.

"It was a setting of the lips, sly, almost imperceptible, which I would probably have taken for a sign of senility but for the keenness of his eyes."

It is so sad that the narrator and his father seem to have nothing in common and the narrator does not know what to do to keep his father busy while he writes his story. It becomes very evident that the son and father had close to no relationship and had not seen each other for a while, turns out to be about three years. Personally, I have an extremely close relationship to both of my parents and granted they are still married and have close family relations. I could not imagine my parents being divorced, mostly due to my rebellion, and not speaking to them, especially my mother who I look up to. The narrator has to deal with these struggles and the fact that his dad obviously does not accept the fact that he has chosen to give up his career as a lawyer and become a writer.

• succumbed: to give way to superior force; yield: to succumb to despair.
  2.

  to yield to disease, wounds, old age, etc.; die.

"My father was drawn to weakness, even as he tolerated none in me."

This quote proves and supports all of the feelings the narrator has towards his father. Since the narrator felt that his father was extremely hard on him, he had extremely strong opinions and did not think that his father's excuse of being a soldier was a sufficient excuse for the way he treated his son. I think that sometimes parents have to be harder on their children then they are on other people because they want their children to succeed and be able to face and overcome challenges. However, sometimes pushing your children too hard can cause them to rebel, similar to what the narrator did which will be revealed in the next couple of pages.

• durian: the edible fruit of a tree, Durio zibethinus,  of the bombax family, of southeastern Asia, having a hard, prickly rind, a highly flavored, pulpy flesh, and an unpleasant odor.
  2.

  the tree itself.

"I learned to hate him with a straight face."

It is extremely sad that the narrator uses such a strong, negative word in the context of his father. I know that many people do hate their parents, but is it really sufficient to use the word hate? Growing up, I learned hate to be one of the harshest words someone could use when referring to another person. The narrator has a lot of animosity towards his father and obviously has learned to deal with it the best he can, but I believe that over the course of the story he learns to love his father for the man he is.

"It was too much, these words, and what connected to them."

When the narrator's girlfriend, Linda, reads over the narrator's story, so far, she gets upset with him because he did not tell her all the details about his father's past, including his past pre and post war and the struggles within his family. The narrator then uses this quote to describe, most likely, the feeling he has when trying to relate everything to the relationship he has with his father back to what his father and their family struggled with before and after the war. This quote is completely understandable and relatable in so many context's. Sometimes I feel like I can only tell a small part to a story or situation because if I wanted to tell the entire story or situation it would take forever trying to explain the events leading up to these occurrences. Personally, I do not think that Linda should have gotten so upset with the narrator because he did not tell her everything, perhaps he was waiting for the right time or did not feel like he has dealt with the situation with his father enough to where he can openly talk about it. 

"At sixteen I left home. There was a girl, and crystal meth, and the possibility of greater loss than I had imagined possible."

Here is the rebellion I spoke of earlier, the father was obviously way to hard on the narrator, growing up, and took out too much of his emotions and anger on his son and lead him to leave home at such an early age. It is shocking to me that the narrator was involved in such heavy drug use because he seems to have led a pretty successful life, being a lawyer and now a writer. However, this quote opens up so much more than just his rebellion, it opens us up to the real reason as to why is parents are separated.

• attenuate: to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value: to attenuate desire.
  2.

  to make thin; make slender or fine.

"When I did, though, rehabilitated and fixed in new privacy's, he was true to his word and never spoke of the matter."

Since the narrator's father promised that if he moved back in, so could his mother, and the subject of the narrator moving out with a girl and getting involved in drugs would never be brought up again. It actually surprised me that the narrator's father never spoke of his son's rebellious stage, but the narrator also made it clear that there was really no conversation between the two after he moved back in. It was also very surprising that the father forced the mother to move out when she was supporting her son through his rebellious stage but let her move back in when he did and expected all of them to just go back to normal and live the life they had before. Obviously, things did not work out in that manner but I think that the mother was stupid in the first place for agreeing to move out and then agreeing to come home, she should not have trusted the father in the first place because obviously he did not love her enough if he let her leave.

• rebuke: to express sharp, stern disapproval of; reprove; reprimand

"I hated what I was doing and I hated that I was good at it. Mostly, I hated knowing it was my job that made my father proud of me."

When the narrator became a lawyer, it was one thing that the father could finally be proud of. Which is completely understandable because what parent does not want their child becoming a lawyer? Lawyers are extremely intelligent and successful people and, although, the narrator hated his job because he knew it made his father proud, he still had to have enjoyed it in order to make his way through graduate school and be good as what he was doing.

"The thing is not to write what no one else could have written, but to write what only you could have written."

• retorted: to reply to, usually in a sharp or retaliatory way; reply inkind to.

"He paused on the word hate like a father saying it before his infant child for the first time, trying the child's knowledge, testing what was inherent in the word and what learned."

Here, the word hate comes up again, but this time the father is hesitant to use it when before the narrator said it with ease when referring to his father. It seems as if, although, the father was referring to the war, he also used it as a symbol of reconcile towards his son, hesitantly saying the word, and the fact that they finally were carrying on a conversation and not "hating" each other like in the past.

• indoctrinations: the act of indoctrinating,  or teaching or inculcating a doctrine,principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view: religious indoctrination.

"For a moment I became my father, watching his sleeping son, reminded of what--for his son's sake--he had tried, unceasingly; to forget."

I feel like this quote is entirely a symbol of the narrator and his father's bonding and relationship flourishing. Although, this is not a very positive quote I believe it shows that the narrator is finally seeing his father's perspective and the struggles his father faced raising a son.

• perilous: involving or full of grave risk or peril;  hazardous; dangerous: a perilous voyage across the Atlantic in a small boat.

"Then I put them both aside and started typing, never looking at them again."

I feel like this quote can relate to a lot of school work. Sometimes procrastination is the best stress to work under because it forces you to come up with something quickly and efficiently. Once the narrator heard his fathers story and read over what he had written the day before without hearing his father's stories to their entirety, he was able to write and write and write until he could not write anymore and there was no turning back because his deadline was quickly approaching!

"If I had known then what I knew later, I wouldn't have said the things I did."

Once the narrator discovers that his father burned the entire story in the drum, he gains respect for him. Saying that he would have done things differently and treated his father differently shows that the narrator has come a long way in appreciation for his father. Some may read it differently, since he does say "I wished he had never come" but I think that it is just a realization that the father put a lot of things into perspective for the narrator. Although this story is not very relatable to me because I have awesome relationships with both of my parents, I am sure it is relatable to a lot of readers that come from broken families. At the end I believe the narrator did gain appreciation, as did the father realize that his son has chosen writing and he just had to deal with it. When the father was telling the narrator his war stories, I think, not only, did they bond but it was a good way to communicate their feelings and understandings since they never did that in the past.