Reflections

Reflections Today’s society has been overwhelmed with many family problems. This statement holds true in Wallace Stegner’s short story “The Blue-Winged Teal.” John and Henry, the two main characters, are father and son with a problem bigger than the both of them combined. With the death of the wife and mother, their relationship, if there was one, was lost with little hope of getting it back. Stegner’s short story exemplifies how the life and death of a loved one can come between then strengthen father and son. As in many families, there is one person that is the glue of the family. In Stegner’s story the mother is what held the family together. Even while the mother was living, John and Henry’s relationship was never seemed strong. The father and son’s relationship is described as, “ . . . driftwood in a wide cold sea” (215) and “ . . . the two weak illuminations diffusing in the shadowy poolroom, leaving the middle in almost absolute dark” (208). Their relationship was filled with holes and misunderstandings. Stegner seems to symbolize the father and son as a light on each end and the shadowy darkness being their relationship. father, relationship, henry, stegner, john, story, son, mother, henry’s, communication, wife, one, between, back, understand, unable, two, things, talk, stegner’s, seems, people, old, never, mirror, lost, lack, finally, family, even, whole, town, time, though, spoke