Analyse af 'A Trip to Grand Rapids' og 'The Kite'

All parents know that letting go of your children can be hard – maybe even the hardest thing that a person will do in his or her lifetime. After watching them grow up, knowing their sorrows and delights, it must be a depressing moment when you first realize that your children don’t need you anymore, that you can’t protect them from the big, bad, world any longer. And maybe your children don’t even want you to. The process is necessary; the roads must split to some degree for your children to have a good life.

This is the major theme in the short story “A Trip to Grand Rapids”, where the main character Roger is in a dilemma regarding his two daughters.

The story is a humorous interpretation of Roger’s struggle to find out how to handle his almost-adult daughters. It’s set on the family’s farm in Lake Wobegon, Ohio. Roger is a farmer who’s full of worries in the beginning – both about his farm and about his daughters. The story is told in a 3rd person omniscient narrator who’s limited to Roger’s feelings and thoughts.

Roger still views his daughters as little girls; he worries about them and lays down rules for them to follow. This might be why Martha, one of the daughters, doesn’t seem to like him very much – he won’t let her kitten inside at night, after all “that’s what it had fur for, put it outside, it’ll take care of itself”. This is also a paradox; the kitten is much younger than Martha and must fend for itself, whereas Martha isn’t allowed to make her own decisions.