The Narrator’s Father Character Analysis

Each time I awoke, I scribbled down whatever I could remember. Later I copied the dreams over in crazier-looking handwriting on a yellow legal pad, adding terrifying details, to hand in to Dr. Tuttle in July. My hope was that she’d think I needed more sedation.

My father was always sick in my dreams, sunken eyes, greasy smudges on the thick lenses of his glasses. Once, he was my anesthesiologist. I was getting breast implants. He put his hand out a little hesitantly for me to shake, as though he wasn’t sure who I was or if we’d met before. I lay down on the steel gurney. Those dreams with him were the most upsetting. I’d wake up in a panic, take a few more Rozerem or whatever, and go back to sleep.

The carefree tranquility of sleep gave way to a startling subliminal rebellion—I began to do things while I was unconscious.

Pondering all this down in Reva’s black room under her sad, pilly sheets, I felt nothing. I could think of feelings, emotions, but I couldn’t bring them up in me. I couldn’t even locate where my emotions came from. My brain? It made no sense. Irritation was what I knew best—a heaviness on my chest, a vibration in my neck like my head was revving up before it would rocket off my body. But that seemed directly tied to my nervous system—a physiological response. Was sadness the same kind of thing? Was joy? Was longing? Was love?

How many of my parents’ hairs and eyelashes and skin cells and fingernail clippings had survived between the floorboards since the professor moved in? If I sold the house, the new owners might cover the hardwood with linoleum, or tear it out. They might paint the walls bright colors, build a deck in the back and seed the lawn with wildflowers. The place could look like “the hippie house” next door by spring, I thought. My parents would have hated that.

There was majesty and grace in the pace of the swaying branches of the willows. There was kindness. Pain is not the only touchstone for growth, I said to myself. My sleep had worked. I was soft and calm and felt things. This was good. This was my life now. I could survive without the house. I understood that it would soon be someone else’s store of memories, and that was beautiful. I could move on.

Each time I awoke, I scribbled down whatever I could remember. Later I copied the dreams over in crazier-looking handwriting on a yellow legal pad, adding terrifying details, to hand in to Dr. Tuttle in July. My hope was that she’d think I needed more sedation.

My father was always sick in my dreams, sunken eyes, greasy smudges on the thick lenses of his glasses. Once, he was my anesthesiologist. I was getting breast implants. He put his hand out a little hesitantly for me to shake, as though he wasn’t sure who I was or if we’d met before. I lay down on the steel gurney. Those dreams with him were the most upsetting. I’d wake up in a panic, take a few more Rozerem or whatever, and go back to sleep.

The carefree tranquility of sleep gave way to a startling subliminal rebellion—I began to do things while I was unconscious.

Pondering all this down in Reva’s black room under her sad, pilly sheets, I felt nothing. I could think of feelings, emotions, but I couldn’t bring them up in me. I couldn’t even locate where my emotions came from. My brain? It made no sense. Irritation was what I knew best—a heaviness on my chest, a vibration in my neck like my head was revving up before it would rocket off my body. But that seemed directly tied to my nervous system—a physiological response. Was sadness the same kind of thing? Was joy? Was longing? Was love?

How many of my parents’ hairs and eyelashes and skin cells and fingernail clippings had survived between the floorboards since the professor moved in? If I sold the house, the new owners might cover the hardwood with linoleum, or tear it out. They might paint the walls bright colors, build a deck in the back and seed the lawn with wildflowers. The place could look like “the hippie house” next door by spring, I thought. My parents would have hated that.

There was majesty and grace in the pace of the swaying branches of the willows. There was kindness. Pain is not the only touchstone for growth, I said to myself. My sleep had worked. I was soft and calm and felt things. This was good. This was my life now. I could survive without the house. I understood that it would soon be someone else’s store of memories, and that was beautiful. I could move on.