This story presents itself in a detached and/or disassociated play-like structure. The narrator, Jackie, spends a three-part narrative undergoing a maturity shift as he deals with the fact his mother has committed adultery. The figurative sections of his life make up the assumed parts of a play.
The first stage of change represents Jackie’s initial shock to finding out about his mother’s infidelity. It starts with a sort of male bonding experience. It shows a father and son enjoying their day together.The mother is only mentioned in passing throughout this section and is never brought to the forefront of the story. You can tell from the wording used throughout this section that the farther and son spend a lot of time hunting, fishing, and doing “daily tasks. It even implies the farther “did not know limits,” as they stayed out day after day, presumably leaving the mother alone at home for a copious amount of time. You then start to get the underlaying message as Jackie’s father asks if he had thought of sex or girls before. This is when you first begin to get an understanding of Jackie’s vantage point on life as he replies by saying, that no, he hadn’t though of sex and only worried about his parents dying before him. This theme of sex and fear continues for Jackie as they continue on their way home. The father comments on the neighboring farmers field saying that they have waited too long to harvest their wheat and they will lose it to the cold. He says they “knew nothing about farming”. You can assume the father has very little concern about the actual field and is in turn referring to his relationship with the mother and not the wheat field.
The second stage shows Jackie as he come to accept human sexuality and that parental figures are less of authority figures and more just normal people. Jackie first slips into this mindset when he releases that Woody, the person his mother cheated with, is very close to his age group. This is shocking to Jackie as he has never seemed to think of sex, gender, or overall sexuality. We can see in the first part that Jackie’s feelings on sex are limited, yet this person so close to his age has had sex with his mother. The difference perplexes Jackie as he says, “He and I were not so far apart in age…But Woody was one thing, and I was another.” Jackie’s whole world has changed upon this realization. As this new information regarding sex is shaking his innocence, his mother is also leaving. His life, set with strict parental figures and a strong sense of authority, is broken down to nothing. He has lost his parents. They are no longer his mother and father but just one man and one woman. Just people. He is then left to “be alone with his father”. Jackie is no longer with his farther but alone with him as he had “fallen inside” of himself. Jackie’s parents are humanized for the first time in his life.
The Third part represents Jackie’s ultimate realization of the human condition as it relates to personal cognition. Jackie has come to understand that each person must deal with their own narratives as they see fit. You see him descend into this self isolation as he feels winter setting in during his lone walk past familiar places.You see Jackie come to terms with the changing state of his adolescence as he looks out on a loading dock and suddenly see it as “small.” Jackie has sensed a “turn” in his life. He has begun to assume his own identity outside of his parents. He is gaining the understanding of reality as it exists to each person as an independent variable. He realizes all the questions left unanswered by his parents are meant to be unanswered. He must find his own understanding of the world in his own conscious state.