JGB's ENG 104

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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“The Management of Grief” by Bharati Mukherjee is a heart-wrenching short story about Shaila Bhave, a Canadian-Indian immigrant, who was one of the hundreds of people that lost their family in 1985 on Air India Flight 182. This flight was taken down by a Sikh extremist group, who were outraged at the Indian government for […]

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Go, be brave. In the short story “The Mangement of Grief” by Bharati Mukherjee, the main character Shaila Bhave has just lost members of her family in a plane bombing. I found that there are two main themes that drive the story: culture and grief. Both of these affect not just how Bhave acts, but […]

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“Once upon a time we were well brought up women; we were dutiful wives who kept our heads veiled and our voices shy and sweet.” pg 441 Although this is a fictional account of real events, “The Management of Grief” feels like an actual retelling of events that took place after the tragedy. The narrator […]

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Prior to reading “The Management of Grief” by Bharati Mukherjee, I learned the story is based off of an Air India Flight 182 which crashed over the Irish Sea in 1985. All passengers had been killed, most being Hindu and Indian. The bombing was caused by an extremist group of Sikh, the youngest of the […]

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“The Management of Grief” by Bharati Mukherjee is a story about an Indian woman, Shaila Bhave, as she copes with the loss of her family due to a terrorist attack. Told in first person present tense, I was able to better understand Shaila as she navigates her life through this tragedy right as it happens. […]

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Mukherjee’s “The Management of Grief” effortlessly intertwines Hindu culture into the way Shaila, the narrator, manages her grief for the loss of her family in the 1985 terrorist bombing of Air India Flight 182. Hindu culture is rich with tradition; it becomes evident in the story that the narrator, and several other characters, have lost […]

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June 23, 1985, is a day that will stay with the hearts of Indians all around the world. A plane that was on its way to London from Montreal was bombed, and every passenger lost their life that day. Many believe that Sikh extremists were the cause, and one was convicted in 2003. (www.britannica.com) Bharati […]

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In “The Management of Grief” by Bharati Mukherjee, something that is never truly explained or comment on is the use of Sikh, as a noun or a adjective. Sure, it can be used as an allusion to connect the story to the Sikh bombing, an actual event on June 23, 1985. However, if that is its purpose […]

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The story “The Management of Grief” is based on a terrorist bombing in 1985, when Air India Flight 182 was destroyed by a bomb and crashed in the Atlantic Ocean. All passengers and crew were killed.In the story, the narrator, Shaila Bhave, has lost her husband and her two sons in the plane crash. Shaila […]

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On June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182 was bombed by Sikh radicals and killed all 329 passengers and crew. In the years that followed this tragic event, the Canadian government struggled to find those responsible for the attack. It was not until 2003 that Inderjit Singh Reyat, an Indian-Canadian citizen who was a Sikh […]

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