“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” proves Les to still be naive and easily impacted by the words and actions of others. Les thinks about what his father taught him about boxing and protecting himself while Glen Baxter explains his need to carry a pistol with him at all times. This is continued throughout their hunting trip when Les, the narrator shoots the geese because Glen Baxter told him to. In Aileen’s case, Glen Baxter made the narrator’s mother question her femininity as noted at the bottom of page 234. Les is clearly impacted by Glen Baxter’s presences in his life because he is still telling the story twenty-five years later.