What accounts for the narrators struggles with her dad?
The narrator grew up as the daughter of a gunsmith in Bozeman, Montana. She admired her father and the amount of time he put into pursuing what he loved but at the same time she despised the machines of death that he made. Her struggle with her father started when she was six and he took her and her twin sister in the backyard and taught them how to shoot a pistol. She described the traumatic event of willing herself to pull the trigger and the gun knocking her to the ground. From that day on she and her father never saw eye to eye.
They supported different political parties and rarely ever talked to each other because it always ended in an argument. In the end of the article she talked about her one of her father’s last inventions, a cannon. She understood his historical reasons for wanting to build it and decided to better understand him and decided to go with him to shoot it for its first time out. When she heard the noise she instantly fell in love with it. She realized that her and her father were not so different in that they both were in love with odd gadgets and that they were loners in their hobbies.
I think that for most people that don’t like guns or the people that build them is that they don’t understand the reason behind it much like the narrator. She saw guns as weapons of death and despised them but she didn’t realize that this was her father’s love aside from his family. For her father they were a hobby and a tool like many other trades but after her bad experience they stained her and made her resent everything about him.
Hi Dustin,
ReplyDeleteI like that you mention the different political parties in your dialogue. Did you ever think if the main reason the narrarator may have began leaning to the left was due to her not liking guns? I think that because of that fact, she leaned to the left and never looked back. It makes me wonder if as a child her father would have tried to do something she liked, maybe that would've given her motivation to try something her father liked earlier and they would've had a better relationship throughout their lives.
Hi Dustin,
ReplyDeleteSarah argues that shooting a gun wasn't traumatic; she just didn't like it. I often hear arguments about the desensitization that happens when people, particularly children, are over-exposed to something; what's interesting about Sarah is the fact that she's not desensitized to guns. She never stops noticing them. I agree that she doesn't understand guns and her father's obsession with them, but I think the lack of understanding is at the core of many disagreements.
Thanks for giving me more to think about.
Lauren
Hi Dustin,
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting is how you say they never saw eye to eye after her first pistol shot and when they came back together they realized they did have things in common after the first cannon shot. At first she was seeing them more as a weapon because of a bad experience the first time she shot one, she had never really understood her fathers hobby and what was so great about them till they had gotten together.
Hey Dustin,
ReplyDeleteI think that it was neat how you pointed out that shooting off the cannon was more than shooting a weapon to Vowell, it was a way for her to appreciate her father's hobby. This was the turning point of their relationship. Great job!!
Hi Dustin,
ReplyDeleteI liked the way that you described everything and am agree with Alex about the left and right parties and its relationship with liking gun and disliking it and it was very interesting for me too.
It was sad to see that a father and his own daughter struggling for their differences and I believe it was a way for them to try to know each other and get their anger out.