The Power of Race, Class, and Gender - Essay Example

The paper discusses an obvious dysfunction between father and son because each of them cannot be honest with each other about how they really feel.

The family atmosphere is also not conducive to sharing secrets. Jack’s dad married soon after the passing of Jack’s mother without even informing him that he would do that. It is a fact that in Native American society men do not share deep feelings; however, this fact just served to worsen the relationship between Jack and his father. Jack felt a sense of abandonment when this took place and went to reside with his aunt. The older generation in this tale, which is made up of the narrators’ father, Aunt Greta, and the extended family reside in the Indian reservation, but Jack makes the decision to further his education and moves out of the reservation. Owing to this decision to improve his life, his connection with his family members is weakened.

In Native American families, it appears that in most households, there is a lot of adjustment that is accepted as being normal. Gerstel and Sarkisian state that "Black and Latino's families are more disorganized than White families" (Gerstel and Sarkisian, 62). This may not be a reality in all families of non-White ethnicities, but it occurs more often in these families than in white families. Aunt Greta's household was altered significantly many times in the course of her life. Her husband passed away, and thus she had to look after her grandfather in his old age, along with her nephew. Prior to going to university, Roger is invited to a party in which he gets inebriated and is involved in a fight. The lack of boundaries that would have resulted from being a part of a fully functional family may have prevented this. Jack was mainly brought up by his aunt. There are boundaries that will only be respected by children when the father of the family enforces them. Jack, coming from a dysfunctional family, lacked such boundaries. He is imprisoned as a result of the fight but still does not appear to understand the importance of taking responsibility for his actions because he flees when he sees that his aunt is angry with him.

If he was made to account for his actions by a strong father when he was growing up, he would accept the consequences of his actions. When he goes to his father, the father tells him about Aunt Greta’s past so that he can understand why she feels that way. This is another dysfunctional aspect of the father-son relationship because his father should actually be chastising Jack, and not attempting to make his aunt, who is on the right, appear to be the strict and unreasonable person. Jack’s father appears to want to be friends with his son, whereas the role he has been given calls for him to be his son’s disciplinarian. Though Jack finally chooses a responsible path, this was merely a result of fate and not due to the supportive relationships that existed between him and members of his nuclear as well as extended family. The lack of a father in a child’s life has been shown in past researches to result in many kinds of dysfunctional behaviors. The fact that Jack did not develop into a person who had no sense of responsibility was merely a result of fate.