Conversation with My Father by Grace Paley - Research Paper Example

Conversation with My Father by Grace Paley ‘Conversation with My Father’ by Grace Paley is a short story, which has a very unique style of narration. It has a story within a story. The daughter visits her ailing father who is suffering from a cardiac problem, he is completely bed ridden and living on a lifeline. The father requests her to write a story following the conventional narrative style of the great masters like Chekhov and Maupassant with a definite beginning, middle and an end. Most importantly the protagonist who happens to be a woman needs to be a recognizable character according to the 86 years old father. The woman that the daughter has chosen as her protagonist is a single mother in New York City with an adolescent son who has become a junkie. The first query that her old father makes about the protagonist is about the legitimacy of the child (son). He questions, “Doesn’t anyone in your stories get married? Doesn’t anyone have the time to rundown to city hall before they jump to bed ” (Paley). To that the daughter replies “No” she further states “In real life, yes. But in my stories, no.” (Paley) Thus from the beginning the generation gap between the father and the daughter is quite evident. They not only have a different approach to their preferred literary styles but also to marriage itself. Paley follows a style, which is typical of her and where the story does not moralize but in a simple fashion unravels a lot of truths around us. The story telling brings out gaps between generations and time that are reflected in terms of literary preferences as well as lifestyles. The setting is simple and domestic but the story narrated within the story essentially points towards the busy life of New York City epitomizing modernization and liberalization of the gender barrier. The setting supports the theme of neo feminism and generation differences brought out by the author. The daughter goes on to assert her lack of respect for marriage even further by saying “Marriage or not it is of small consequence.” (Paley) To that her frail father protests vehemently. He thinks her daughter is yet to come to terms with real life in which “character” is of prime importance. His conception of character is a sanctified character that lives according to old social norms of morality and legitimacy. The daughter fails to convince her that the world has lost its old glory and there has been a gradual metamorphosis of social values as well as individual prerogatives for modern women. After the altercation is temporarily subdued the daughter resumes with her narration and highlights on the character of the adolescent son of the woman who has become a junky in his mannerisms. In order to keep track with her eccentric son the mother also retorts to becoming a junky herself. But despite her deliberate attempt to change herself according to the demands of time she cannot hold her son back. Perhaps new generation is running too fast for her to keep track with them. The line that sums up the bereavement of the poor mother is “If we mentioned any of our children who were at the college or the hospital or dropouts at home, she would cry my baby! My baby! And burst into terrible, face scurrying, time consuming tears.” (Paley) Hearing this far the old father concludes the protagonist to be an out an out tragic character. Who doesn’t have any hope alive for her? This is the defining point of the story where the daughter strongly defies her father’s point of view. She says she can be alone, she may be grief stricken but that doesn’t end her life. She still can move on with her life in her own way. She says, “She could be hundred different things in this world as time goes on- a teacher or a social worker.” (Paley) The writer sounds quite resolute when she says “ I’m not going to leave her in that house crying.” She voices her optimism when she opines “Everyone real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life” (Paley) Through out the story Paley advocates the rights of an independent woman who faces the uncertainties and shocks of life but ultimately she doesn’t surrender to pain and the reality of living alone. Set in the early thirties of the twentieth century New York, this story that has a story within, shoes three different generations with their own perspectives and ideologies. They may be self contradicting but they never seem irrelevant if we view the world through their eyes.          Paley epitomizes the neo feminist in the American world being a woman of the Jewish Russian origin. (Wade, 84) She neither agrees with her father’s conventional hangover for ‘recognizable character’ nor does she accept that a single mother who doesn’t live according to the formalities of the old patriarchal society is not fit to have a recognizable character. (Merkel, 4) She champions the never say die attitude of progressive woman who think living according to their will is not a sin but a fundamental right in a free society where every individual is on his or her own. Society doesn’t have the right to prevent his or her liberty of living free from so-called constraints of morality and sexuality. His father is 86, very much an old decrepit man restricted to his bed, living on oxygen cylinders. His heart does not work properly, he has lost his physical movement but he has not lost his old ideal and orthodoxy. The dichotomy between the worldviews of the old man and the neo-liberal woman is very much evident through out the story. To the father who still prefers the Russian formalism is unacquainted with the American ways of life. He still believes in the sanctity of marriage and man-woman relationship in the sugarcoated garb of husband and wife. So a love child is still very much a taboo to him. Where as to the daughter who is abreast with the changing ways of the American society matrimony is of more importance rather than the sanctity of the institution of marriage. The father firstly due to his age and secondly due to his conservative ways of thinking is stuck within the stereotypical ways of life. To him a good story is one, which follows the literary tradition of the 18th century. A woman who is a victim of her own destiny, who never really had a formal husband, who is deserted by her only son perhaps not due to any fault of her own, is cut out to be a tragic character. He appears to be a cynic seeing only the negative sides of life who never sounds optimistic about life itself. The daughter, in her story gives little or no importance to marriage and in her story the woman becomes a ‘fine handsome woman’ which breaks the conventional definition of a woman and the feminist makes her point in her own way.       Paley’s characters are true to their time in their respective views of life. Her conversational first person narrative is quite unique. She probes within the characters with meticulous precision. Her style is quite straight forward avoiding unnecessary verbal sentimentalizing she goes on to narrate her story in two phases. The narration starts with an objective description of her bedridden father, then the father daughter conversation starts. In course of that conversation she takes her readers to the sub plot of the story, the story of a single woman struggling through the puzzles of life. Paley doesn’t sympathize with her protagonist rather she establishes her character with dignity and the spirit of living life on her own terms. Her protagonist, Faith, represents Paley’s feminine sense of freedom and resilience. She resolves to guide her creation to the path of self-fulfillment and self-emancipation rather giving in to the agony of loneliness. Throughout the story we two sets of relationships, on the one hand we have the father daughter relationship between the author and her father, on the other hand we have the mother and son relationship which is the author’s own creation. Despite the perceptual differences between the father and the daughter there relationship is quite cordial. But the fictional relationship is never really palpable. The son of the protagonist is never seen in close contact with his mother. Despite the mother’s attempt to adapt herself to the maverick ways of her son she never really comes in close proximity with him. Ultimately she is isolated from her son for good. This also shows the dwindling relationships in modern times. No relationship is permanent in modern times in the American society individual hope and aspiration is more important than the bond of human relationships. The story is a piece of meta fiction, a fiction about fiction. The narrator herself is also a writer who juxtaposes two stories into one. They revolve in parallel with each other. The conversation that the narrator has with her father was not all about the narrative technique of the story but also about depiction of real life in fiction. Paley experiments with her plot, although she wants to please her father she passionately wants to defy the traditional concept of plot “the absolute line between two points which I’ve always despised. Not for literary reasons, but because it takes all hope away. Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.” (Paley) The autobiographical touches in the story is very much evident, Paley a neo liberal feminist quite proactive in advocating the rights of an independent woman in mid 20th century – “Standing at the forefront of writers who use the context of gender not as a sociological topic but as a generative force for their narrative is Grace Paley” (Klinkowitz, 117). She voices her own views through the narrator of her story, using her as her mouthpiece. She continuously merges facts with fiction. She chooses a story that “had been happening for a couple of years right across the street,” (Paley) and centering on a woman who became a junkie to accustom herself to the youth culture of New York.    Works Cited 1. Klinkowitz, Jerome, Structuring the Void : the struggle for contemporary American Fiction, New York: Duke University Press, 1992 2. Merkel, Julia, Grace Paley and the Subject of Family in Her Work and Life, Munchen: GRIN Verlag, 2007 3. Paley, Grace, ‘Conversation with my Father’, Noonday Press, retrieved on May 20, 2009 from: http://users.ipfw.edu/ruflethe/A%20Conversation%20with%20My%20Father.htm (accessed on May 20, 2009) 4. Wade, Stephen, Jewish American literature since 1945, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999   Read More