Andre Agassi's 'Open': An Analysis

Where was he right now? Jeremiah felt a lack of distance from his dad. He found out that Lois Ann and his father had a thing going on. On page 99 it says “He didn’t know that Lois Ann and his father had a thing going on, a heavy thing that would eventually break the family apart”. This shows that Jeremiah is not happy with his family and is very distant from them.

Wes has a responsibility to his own older brother, but also to Marie Little Soldier, who aides to Davy. Several times she is explicated as being family. First after hearing the news, Wes of course tries to deny that his brother Frank could have done the things Marie accused him of doing. Wes flashbacks to his childhood, recalling a memory of when Frank saved him from abuse and bullying at the hands of older kids. The point is he feels the

Okonkwo has a very hard time with his firstborn Nwoye, he’s lazy and Okonkwo asks him to do chores first, but when he sees that he doesn’t, he starts to beat him. “Okonkwo’s first son, Nwoye, was causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness, so he sought to correct him by nagging him and beating him.” It may seem harsh but he never tolerated laziness. Due to his father, he hated the sight of laziness, which is why he’d never want to be like him, or have his kids turn out that way. “He had no patience for unsuccessful men. He had no patience for his father.” He saw Nwoye become lazy at times, which is why he was so harsh, because he doesn’t want him to be unsuccessful.

“Mommy, where’s Daddy?” All over the world, children, some barely old enough to talk, ask this question, as more and more men refuse to step up to the role of a patriarch. While a single mother is certainly a capable parent, the lack of a father in a child’s life still leaves a certain empty space. If the child is a boy, he will never experience the feeling of his dad teaching him how to shave or giving him advice on being a dad some day. If it’s a girl, she will never have her dad there to deny a boy he knows is bad news, or to walk her down the aisle when she finds a boy that he does approve of. The world needs more dads, and the sad part is, many cases of a missing father are simply because of boys refusing to step into manhood and the role they need to play.

“Under the Influence” by Scott Russel Sanders is a personal essay about Sanders’ father and specifically, his alcoholism. As the title of the essay suggests, his father is under the influence of alcohol, but this essay will argue that Scott Sanders is under the influence of his father. Sanders uses the structure of the personal essay to reflect on how his childhood was negatively impacted by his father, and to reveal to himself how his childhood affects his present adulthood. Sanders writes that “the story ends” for his father but that “the story continues” for his siblings, his mother, and most significantly, for himself. (Sanders 733).

Nell and Nagg are the parents of Hamm, and Hamm acts as a father to Clov, although it is unclear whether they are blood related. These four characters live together and their parent-child relationships are apparent in their interactions. Although much of these characters history is a mystery, Nell and Nagg’s damaging parenting behaviors effected Hamm’s adult personality and directly affected the way Hamm fathered Clov. To begin, much of these characters history is a mystery. This play is set in a dystopian world much different from the 21’s century.

Nathan is continually trying to control his family and often forgets about is role as father rather than a leader. Leah emphasizes this point when stating “The education of his family’s souls is never far from my father’s thoughts. He often says he views himself as the captain of a sinking mess of female minds. I know he must find me tiresome, yet still I like spending time with my father very much more than I like doing anything else.” Leah wants her father “back” and is fed up with dealing with the constant commands from

Doug goes through this everyday and although his family loves him, they aren’t very reassuring. His family neglects him. On top of Doug’s father abusing him, so does his brother, Chris. Chris abuses Doug for different reasons, most of the time it’s because he wants something Doug has. “I couldn’t even scream it hurt so bad.

Troy 's hatred of his father acts as a catalyst for many moments in Troy 's life, in negative and positive ways alike. Unlike most fathers, Troy 's father didn 't leave him with a material possession such as a house but instead left him with emotional baggage that crippled the earlier and later parts of Troy 's life. From the beginning, Troy 's father was abusive to his mother and all of his siblings. Troy and his family worked hard on their father 's farm and endured his bitterness towards being a sharecropper. Troy states that his father was greedy and would put his own personal needs above the needs of the family.

Teddy is like the boy in “My Papa’s Waltz” because there is not a lot of information given, yet you still seem like you painfully know everything that is going on with these two boys and their fathers. Even though Teddy has a dead beat father, when people say impolite things about him, Teddy gets very angry and always chooses to stand up for him, and defend him. Why does Teddy love his father so much? Why does he defend him after everything he has done to him?