We seem to read a lot of stories about liars in this class.
Earl, our narrator, is taking his family on a road trip with no real destination in mind since all he’s trying to do is keep away from the law. We don’t know what he’s running from when the story starts, but we later learn he steals cars and lies about income for a living. He takes his girlfriend and daughter with him and tries to maintain some semblance of normalcy in life despite his inability to do so under these circumstances. We hear a few bits about his life and how he’s gotten where he is, but other than that, Earl is a relatively private man. We don’t really know what he’s feeling until his emotions are too much for him (when Cheryl says he’s about to leave) and that seems to be a defense mechanism for keeping the peace.
Earl also doesn’t seem to look back on the events with any feelings attached to the story. It almost feels like his way of getting his story out when he’s going to jail. A justification almost since he’s always putting other people’s actions and feelings before his own. Yet, it also has the feeling of being a reflection. Like he’s trying to figure out what he did wrong and why Edna wanted to leave him. I don’t think Earl knows that he’s in the wrong here. He tries to justify his actions as him taking care of everyone when really everything could have been prevented if he hadn’t stolen the car in the first place. Edna has every right to not want a life like that and I don’t blame her for leaving.
Earl did come off as pretty detached from the actual story as he told it, it gave me the impression that even from the beginning of the story he knew that he’d eventually be caught. Maybe that’s why he tried so hard to keep pacify Edna’s drastic mood swings, it could have given him something else to focus on throughout their trip, because personally I saw her as a distraction to him. Of course, she was a distraction that I think Earl at the time thought that he wanted, but I’m not sure if he saw them being anything long-term. Whenever she told him that she wanted to leave him, it came off to me like he was just frustrated that he put so much time and effort into her through that ordeal only to have her throw in the towel and essentially break up with him. I will also admit how jarring it was for him to have so much focus on his girlfriend rather than his young daughter, I don’t have much to say about that point other than that Earl’s priorities were extremely skewed to me, and I wonder why he dragged not only his girlfriend but his kid along with him in this escapade.