Comparison Of Two Short Stories By Tobias Wolff And T.C Boyle

From the weekend fishing trips to complete hatred and denial, father-son relationships can be characterized by many good and bad experiences. After reading the two short stories "Powder" by Tobias Wolff and "If the River was Whiskey" by T.C. Boyle, which both feature father-son relationships that are placed under a large amount of stress. There are many similarities and differences between these two relationships that are not apparent upon just a cursory glance. A father can be completely inconsiderate of his sons needs or try his best to meet them and still create turmoil within the relationship.

After reading Wolff's short story "Powder," one can conclude that the father tries quite hard to make his son happy. In this story the father takes the son to places the mother would not approve of in order to try and win his affection. Wolff states, "He'd had to fight for the privilege of my company, because my mother was still angry with him for sneaking me into a nightclub during his last visit, to see Thelonious Monk" (33). Taking his son to these places is his way of forming a father-son connection. Not only does he take his son skiing, he fights his wife for the privilege, and when she disagrees he does it without her knowledge. While this strengthens the father-son relation, the husband-wife relation is weakened. In this case the father is trying more to be the best friend instead of a role model, and in doing so creates conflicts with his wife. This directly affects the son's well being because what child would be happy to see his parents fighting.

In Wolff's story the father is displayed as being a risk-taker and borderline reckless. This is where the father and son seem to clash in their relationship. Wolff writes, "I always thought ahead. I was a boy who kept his clothes on numbered hangers to insure proper rotation. I bothered my teachers for homework assignments far ahead of their due dates so I could draw up schedules" (36). Obviously, his father did not plan or think ahead, or he would have planned on leaving the ski lodge early in case they ran into trouble. When they got down the road, the trooper tells them that the road is blocked and the son became annoyed and frustrated with his father's carelessness. He says to his father "we should have left before" (35) This comment made his father feel inadequate, and he did not respond to it. His father's recklessness directly affects their relationship. The boy is more like a man, and the father is more like a boy, showing the "adult" in a relationship is not always who it seems, but that people can learn about themselves by their relationships with others.

The son was very uneasy and nervous when his father started driving down the snow covered road once the trooper left his post. Wolff shows this when he writes "to keep my hands from shaking I clamped them between my knees" (35). The connection was restored between them when the child decided to stop moping and began to enjoy himself. The child says, "My father in his forty-eighth year, rumpled, kind, bankrupt of honor, flushed with certainty. He was a great driver. All persuasion, no coercion, such subtlety at the wheel, such tactful pedalwork. I actually trusted him" (37). This was a big turning point in their relationship because the child now sees greatness in his father that he had never seen before.

In Boyle's short story, "If the River was Whiskey" the same rocky father-son relationship that slowly takes a turn for the better is displayed. The father in Boyle's story is much worse than the one in Wolff's story in that he is an alcoholic that did not spend much time with his son. While in Wolff's story spending time with his son made the father feel good, all the father in Boyle's story needed was alcohol to feel good, giving no attention to his son. The wife attacks the father by saying, "We've been here two weeks and you haven't done one damn thing with him, nothing, zero. You haven't even been down to the lake. What kind of father are you?" (231). Seeing his parents in such an argument affects the son by making him disconnected and hateful toward his father.