1990. Choose a novel or play that depicts a conflict between a parent (or a parental figure) and a son or daughter. Write an essay in which you analyze the source of the conflict and explain how the conflict contributes to the meaning of the work. Avoid plot summary.

    

     In the novel Legend of a Suicide are two main conflicts that make the novel what it is. There is Man vs. Man, Man vs. Self, and the main conflict would be the conflict between the father and his son. The story is based on the conflict and is what it is built off of.

     The conflict started because of the father and the mother getting a divorce and the father abandoning his son. Abandonment in any person’s life takes a toll of someone. I was abandoned by my father and wondered for the longest time why he didn't want, why I wasn't good enough for his love, and why he avoided ever returning my letters. Over time people handle lose differently. I got over the fact that my father never bothered to call and never wanted to see his own first born child. Roy on the other hand was not as strong as I was and never had the desire to see his father.

    He was not a very nice man. Roy's father was in need of mental help and never felt that anyone loved him. He searched in all the wrong places for love, when he had loved ones. Through his searching he hurt his son emotionally and his son was never able to recover from that. Because of his father’s mental illness there was conflict that was bound to accrue between the two.

     Roy did not want to visit or see his father, but he went to visit him because he thought it would make his mother happy. He left to never return again. After Roy's death the father searches for something to fill the void that is now present in his life. He turned to prostitution in order to no be alone, which shows again how the father is the reason for the conflict in to book. His character is very unlikable.

    

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The End

Roy walks in on his father with a gun to his head speechless there was a moment of realization for Roy's father, so he handed the gun to his son on his way out the door. He was walking to clear his head and hears a gun shot, but he isn't fazed by the sound and continues on his personal quest. He later returns home and discovers his own some lying dead on the floor with the gun in his hand. He begins to dig his sons grave and realizes that his ex-wife would want to have him berried in California.

Love of a Father

Roy was abandoned by his father as I was as a child, but a son needs a father figure more than a daughter would. According to Roland Warren, "critical things that every good dad must do, built on a framework of providing, nurturing and guiding. " Roy never had these things to learn from a father and as a result he never found himself. His mother tried to take the best care of him that she could, but a women can only fulfill certain needs for her son as falls short to fulfilling all needs.

Nothing is good Enough

Roy's father is a very self seeking and selfish person. He only cares about himself and does not care about what happens to the actual people that love him. Nothing seems to fulfill this mans so called "needs" He had a wife, left her. He had a son, left him. He had a job, he left it to be a fisherman. He had a daughter, he left her. None of these things that he thought would bring him joy ever did and I don't feel bad for him. I just feel bad for the people that did love him, his kids that at one point did look up to him and his employer who depended on him to do his job.

The Fish

"Ichthyology" registers Roy's distress indirectly through close attention to the fish he keeps in a tank. Roy take special attention to the fish and you see fish a big symbol though out the novel. An example would be the ending of the story book catching a fly, setting off a "million tiny ripples of panic". In the Chinese culture a fish symbolically represents "abundance" and "affluence". The Chinese a referring to an abundance of wealth, luck, or even love, but David Vann took it in a different light and used the fish to represent a different type of abundance. He used it to represent the abundance of sadness, stress, and confusion that Roy was feeling growing up without his father.

Author/Publication Blurb: David Vann

 

David Vann is an author and creative writing professor at the University of Warwick in England. His internationally-bestselling books have won 15 awards, including the Prix Médicis étranger 2010 in France for best foreign novel and the P     David Vann is an author and creative writing professor at the University of Warwick in England. His internationally-bestselling books have won 15 awards, including the Prix Médicis étranger 2010 in France for best foreign novel and the Premi Llibreter 2011 in Spain for best foreign novel, have appeared on more than 70 “Best Books of the Year” lists in 12 countries, and are being published in 19 languages. Vann was awarded the 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship for creative arts, fiction, and has been a National Endowment of the Arts fellow, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and John L’Heureux fellow. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Outside, Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, the Sunday Times, the Observer, the Guardian, the Sunday Telegraph, the Financial Times, Elle UK, Esquire, Esquire Russia, National Geographic Adventure, Writer’s Digest, McSweeney's, and other magazines and newspapers. He has appeared in documentaries with the BBC, Nova, National Geographic, CNN, and E! Entertainment. His books have been selected for the New Yorker Book Club, the Times Book Club, the Samlerens Bogklub in Denmark, read on the BBC and North German Radio, and optioned for film. Vann has done hundreds of interviews and author events, including 40 international book festival. Legend of a Suicide was published in 2008 by University of Massachusetts Press. Later is was published in several different languages and can be purchased on amazon.com.

My Source: Wikipedia

Setting and Perspective of Legend of A Suicide

The setting is in the waste land of Alaska, which symbolizes and foreshadows isolation, starvation, depression, fear, false hope, and even failure. As I began this novel I was not sure what to think about it. I knew is was a good novel based on my piers approval, but did not know what to expect for myself. Starting the book I thought of all the places I would live, have a family, and later possibly commit suicide and Alaska was not my first choice of places. The novel is also from the point of view of the little boy, which was also shocking. I would have predicted that the novel would be in the point of view of the person that takes his/her life.