JGB's ENG 104

  In Francine Prose’s “Talking Dog,” love plays a crucial role in the relationship between the narrator and the sister and how their love for each other has affected the ones around them. Due to them being siblings, there is sibling rivalry, as we see in the following quote:“At the moment I understand that men would […]

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“I ate roast beef and watched him charm everyone but me.” (507) Francine Prose’s “Talking Dog” is written in first person point of view with a omniscient narrator. The narrator is the younger sister of a girl who acts as if she can speak to animals. While the reader knows what the narrator is thinking, they […]

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Out in daylight he needed special glasses, like twin tiny antique cameras, and he ducked his head as he put them on, as if burrowing under a cloth. I was ashamed for anyone to see and ashamed of being embarrassed.” The main character is ashamed of her father’s illness because it shows weakness that she […]

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Francine Prose’s “Talking Dog” is told from the point of view of a grieving younger sister, who struggles through several traumatic events over the course of a short period of time. Through this, we are able to better understand how grief, love, and regret color the narrator’s perspective and prevent her from truly accepting loss […]

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“But I couldn’t say–for example, that I had waited for him, and my sister hadn’t.” 510 Love is the main force at work that drives the narrator throughout the tale of grief and moving on. The moment she meets her sister’s boyfriend, Jimmy, is a confusing experience for her as he scares her but also […]

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No one yet saw the connection between my father dissecting dogs and my sister talking to them. (502) “Talking Dog” by Francine Prose portrays the challenge of envy, or someone having something that you want. Through the first person perspective of the speaker, she looks back into her life about the time when she thought she was […]

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The narrator in Prose’s “Talking Dog” is an adult woman who reflects back to her life as an adolescent. The narrator is unreliable due to her conflicting emotions towards her sister and her sister’s boyfriend, Jimmy. Throughout the story, the narrator battles with her immense love and jealousy she feels towards her sister. She wishes […]

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“I wanted to say she’d lied to us all, she’d faked it about the dog, as if it mattered whether the animal spoke, as if love were about the truth, as if he would love her less—and more—for pretending to talk to a dog.” This story is about the narrator’s coming-of-age. Her older sister invites […]

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In Francine Prose’s “Talking Dog” the central symbol of the story is a white dog. The dog represents a messenger or a guardian angel figure. This can be seen in several places, but the most noticeable is when the narrator’s sister claims that “the dog,… had come to [me] after Jimmy died and personally guaranteed […]

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This short story is told in the narrator’s perspective but she seems to focus on telling the timeline of her sister from Jimmy’s death until her own death at the end of the story. It is clear that this story is written about the narrator’s sister. Throughout the short story, the readers can sense that […]

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I wanted to tell Jimmy that my sister didn’t have powers. I wanted to say that her only power was the power to make everyone look, she’d had nothing, nothing to do with my father going blind, and she’d lied to us all, she’d faked it about the dog, as if it mattered whether the […]

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We’ve read a number of coming-of age stories so far this semester, among them Edward P. Jones’s “The First Day,” T.C. Boyle’s “Rara Avis,” Mary Robison’s “I Am Twenty-One,” Deborah Eisenberg’s “The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor,” Mary Morris’s “The Lifeguard,” Richard Ford’s “Communist,” and Steven Millhauser’s “Behind the Blue Curtain.” Read back through these stories, and develop an […]

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This story was about Les, who is looking back at the moment he became a man. At age sixteen he has already lost his father, therefore losing a crucial male role model in his life. While he may have already lost his father, he is able to bond with Glen Baxter, his mother’s boyfriend who […]

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Richard Ford’s  “Communist” is a coming-of-age story that expresses how wisdom and age are not necessarily linked together. One does not have to have lived a long life in order to gain wisdom from life experiences. Ford’s “Communist” also examines the complexity of human relationships, as it appertains to the strained intimacy between family members […]

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“Communist” by Richard Ford is a story about loneliness and inaction. Forty-one year old Les looks back on his adolescence—he’s lost his father; he has a mother, Aileen, who’s not too invested in parenthood; and the only other figure in his life is Glen Baxter, his mother’s flaky boyfriend. As Les tells his story, it’s […]

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This is a story about the impact of relationships on a young adolescent boy who is starting to enter the world of adulthood. Les grows up only knowing the idealized version of his father that his mother has told him. His mother spends her time watching T.V. or waitressing in town. This leaves sixteen-year-old Les […]

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I am forty-one years old now, and I think about that time without regret. This story is about seeing reality in wishful situations. “Communist” by Richard Ford has three main characters Les, Aileen, and Glen. Les the narrator of the story is the son of Aileen and Glen was Aileen’s communist boyfriend. It has been […]

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I don’t know what I think about “Communist.” On one hand, I can see how it’s the story about the fragility of love and how easily it can be erased over a simple course of events because that part is obvious, but I get the feeling that there is something deeper under the surface. I […]

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“The Communist,” a short story by Richard Ford, is about how the narrator came-of-age during his first hunting experience. As he hears the geese fall from the sky, the narrator associates the sound with a human body falling. Les, the narrator, tells this story later in his life, because, it shows the first time that […]

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Richard Ford’s story, “The Communist” is about the complexity of family relationships and how to deal. Many of the examples of the relationships aline with the ideal of the American Dream, and the ideal family. Les is taken by his mother’s new boyfriend to go shooting, this situation is typically seen as a young, American […]

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“I like to box,” I said. “My father did it. It’s a good thing to know.” “I suppose you have to protect yourself too,” Glen said. “I know how to,” I said. (222) Richard Ford’s “Communist” is about the impact Glen Baxter leaves on the narrator, Les, and his mother, Aileen. As a coming-of-age story, “Communist” […]

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And how old was I then? Sixteen. Sixteen is young, but it can also be a grown man. (235) “Communist” is a coming-of-age story about a boy and his struggles with only a mother figure in his life. Les looks back at all of the moments in his life with his mother and Glen, his […]

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And I did not know what to do then. Though it is true that what I wanted to do was to hit him, hit him as hard in the face as I could, and see him on the ground bleeding and crying and pleading for me to stop…I felt sorry for him, as though he […]

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“Communist” by Richard Ford is about the fleeting love the narrator’s mother has for Glen Baxter. This becomes very clear near the end of the story starting with Glen and the narrator’s mother’s conversation shown below. “nobody’s going” he said “this is over with now” and my mother gave Glen a cold look then “you […]

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Then as I stood in the path looking north to Queen’s Park and west to the university, I heard the voices of my family one last time. Your time has come, they said. Go, be brave. I don’t know where this voyage I have begun will end. I do not know which direction I will take. (447) Bharati Mukherjee’s “The […]

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