“Roque” follows the a third person narration of a young boy’s experience with his mother’s newest boyfriend. The story focus how he connects with his potential step father and in the end, accepts him as a father figure. What I liked about this short story was the idea of accepting another person as a family member especially when you can see it makes your parental happy. I think that at a young age and not having the inconsistent father or father figure would be understandable to be hesitant to accept the newly found boyfriend because like most before, they haven’t been around long enough to connect with.
I think that I’m fortunate that I don’t have to accept a new family figure as a potential step dad, but then I couldn’t really understand what Erick is thinking or enduring emotionally. I think the central conflict is acceptance, Erick doesn’t really know to accept or get close. I think seeing our protagonist struggle with an issue that can effect people today, it can be a lot more real to the reader. Personally, I cannot emotionally connect with the central conflict because I never had to experience that as a kid, but I can see a perspective on what a few kids had to endure this particular situation.
What I really like was how it ended, he chose the apparently “nobody” over the baseball player. I really liked how he chooses personality and his mother’s happiness, rather than a image that would probably not end up as happy as she would want it. I think with this ending you can see an example that family is the most important thing and knowing you can help make each other happy, can make the family stronger and have healthy relationships with each other.
What I noticed by Gilb is he focuses on the concept of stepfather’s and family bondage. We could use the theory that how the author thinks explains the meaning of the text. I think it’s interesting and the recurring idea of Gilb not having a father but having father figures through out his life. It would explain his style but that’s not my primary objective.
I agree with you Juan, the third person does explain a lot of what he goes through and my favorite part was the end as well, when he said look everybody signed it, the baseball and choose to drop the note to his mother. Wow, you would have thought he would want a baseball player for a father but in the end he was strong and made his decision. I thought he would have chosen to give his mother the note but I guess he is tired of his mom being perused by all these men.
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