The speaker is the story's narrator, Lyman, and Henry is
his brother.
The red convertible was a car that Henry and
Lyman bought on a whim. They used it throughout the entire summer (before the war), and
it was a time of joy and brotherly escapades, traveling to new places and meeting new
people.
Henry is in the Vietnam War in 1970, and when he
returns home, he is not the same man. He is nervous and angry. Lyman isn't sure what to
do to help.
In order to get through to his brother, Lyman
goes out one night and beats the convertible up with a hammer. He does all he can to
make the car inoperable, and then sits back and waits. In about a month, Henry finally
comes to Lyman and complains that he hasn't taken good care of the car. Lyman hasn't
really spoken at all since returning home: this is where he strings together more than
six lines.
This is the context of the statement: Lyman
[thinks he] manipulates Henry into caring about the car. Lyman says it's a piece of
junk, but Henry argues the point and decides to fix it. Lyman seems to think that if he
distracts him from his pain, Henry can be saved. He sees hope in his brother's
singleminded desire to refurbish the car. By the end of the story, we find that Lyman
hasn't really been keeping one step ahead of Henry. Henry has been on to what Lyman was
trying to do, and Henry knows what he has become.
The two
men go out for a ride to the river water to see how high it is. All of a sudden, Lyman
is able to understand his brother's pain. He shouts at him and tells him to wake up,
and here Henry admits to what he has become. Henry has lost himself. It's as if he is
now just a ghost, a shadow of who he used to be.
At the
water, Henry is ready to give the car to Lyman, perhaps symbolizing his desire to just
give up. Perhaps he tries to return the car to Lyman, as if he knows somehow he'll have
no need of it himself, or it is a symbolic gesture that rejects the past because Henry
cannot find his way back there. The car means nothing to Henry except for what he thinks
it could mean to Lyman, but Lyman doesn't want it. They start to fistfight, and before
too long, they are both laughing. They reach out and can almost touch the
past.
Lyman, still trying to distract Henry, suggests that
they might pick up some girls, but Henry says all girls are crazy. Lyman tells Henry
he is crazy. Lyman becomes thoughtful about this, but then agrees
that he is crazy.
On an impulse, Henry
jumps into the water for a swim, and is carried off. He doesn't seem concerned as he
hollers back to Lyman that his boots are filling up with water. Then he is gone. Lyman
searches until dark. At this point, he turns the car on, headlights shining, and drives
it—empty—into the water.
Does Henry commit suicide? I don't
think so. He doesn't seem to care enough anymore to even bother taking his life. He
just goes into the water and is lost again, but this time it's for
good.
The line may simply mean that we can run from who we
are, but we cannot hide and we cannot be distracted. Henry could not face who he had
become; his loss was too great for him to overcome it.
No comments:
Post a Comment