First-Person Fiction

In Richard Ford’s “Optimists” the narrator decided, after seeing and speaking to his mother for the first time in years, to tell the story of how life changed suddenly for him. The narrator, Frank, told his story when he was 43 years old, looking back to when he had been sixteen. I believe Frank told this story by means of speaking or writing with some form of an audience; he uses “you,” which led me to believe there is an audience, as in on page 188 where he says, “And when you are the age I was then…”

The narrator was looking back on the events that happened with more realizations than what he would have had at the time. He looked back and realized things about the situation and the people, like when he thought his dad had been a bit of gambler despite stating, “though I did not even know what it meant to be a gambler then.” (Ford 183) This, I find, really defines how much this man has learned over the years after the event. There was a strong sense of maturity and a desire to understand despite he knew it may not be the best to know. The ending was where we learned where he stood at this point in time — 43 years old — though the beginning clearly states that this is a story that happened a long time ago. I want to say that the narrator thinks this is a story about his family being torn apart, but I feel like he realizes it’s about him and the toll it took on him. Even though he’d been young and understood then that the family fell apart, he was looking back on it as if he’s realized something greater. I gather that the narrator, while still learning things at this point in his life, is very close to realizing that he learned to fear his father. A man, he saw, “made mistakes,” and who, “could hurt people,” and he dived deeper into it as he noticed that his father ruined his life, his son’s life, his wife’s life, and there is no turning back.

At a point, I think he realized he didn’t understand his father and what could make him snap so easily, but it’s also likely he understood as a child that his father hadn’t been doing well in the first place–his father had seen a man die earlier that day anyway. At the time he felt really lost, confused, and alone, and he could only guess what his mother had been feeling. I think this story was a bit of a reflection; as he thought back to the events that took place, he was looking at it with a new perspective. He’s been a husband, a son, and a soldier, and I think he  learned that it’s easy to break when times get hard — but he can’t, for some reason, forgive his father, who had completely vanished. His tone, to me, sounded soft, reflective, and maybe even inquisitive. He was soft about his family, thinking about them still in good light — as good as possible — and reflective as he thought about how things could have gone differently; then there was his curiosity about why it all happened the way it had. I don’t think the narrator changed as he told the story, but he certainly changed in the story from a clueless child to a man who had a little more knowledge and reflection about things that could and can happen. I think the narrator found telling the story meaningful as if to give himself a breath of relief — reminding him it’s over — or that it is a call to his family; he missed them but understands why these things happened.