I Stand Here Ironing: My Father Sits In The Dark

My Father Sits in the Dark” has the universal aspect of being connected to family. The connection is between the narrator, who is the son, and his father. The boy worries that his father is not well because of his unusual behavior. This aspect makes it unique because it should be the father worrying about the son. The narrator describes that his father sits in the dark, alone, smoking, staring straight ahead of him, unblinking, into the small hours of the night. The boy is persistent in trying to get answers from his father; until he realizes that his father is only sitting there thinking. The father enjoys being in the dark, because growing up he had no electricity. He finds it comforting to sit in the dark and think.

The stories

Her daughter, Emily has not received the love and attention she needed as a child. Being a young, single working mother, she placed Emily in several different childcare situations, where she was neglected and unloved. Emily has cried to her mother many times thinking it would get her the attention and love she so dearly craves. For example when being picked up from daycare, her mother says, “when she saw me she would break into a clogged weeping I can hear yet”. The mother has come to terms with the fact that she did what she had to do in order for her and her daughter to survive. Emily finally figured out that crying out would not give her attention, so she became a sort of loner, silently keeping to herself. Her mother saw her as the best child ever, never complained about anything. Because, of her mother’s situation, Emily was also forced to grow up a lot faster than other girls her age. She had a lot of responsibilities such as becoming like a mother to her siblings, housekeeping, and shopping for the household. All of Emily’s responsibilities and the longing she had for wanting attention and love have made it hard for her to find her identity. Her mother still can’t seem to come to any conclusions about her life, her choices, or the way she brought her daughter up, by the end of the story. But she does show her

The narrator, who is never named, tells a story of the desire his parents had to provide a better life for their children. The boy’s father “intended by nature to be a cheerful, kindly man,” and who has acquired the “American passion for getting up in the world,” has lost his happiness. He has been content with his life until the time that his son is born and his wife decides that they need a change of life so that both her son and husband can have the opportunity for a better life. They move and begin raising chickens. His father has a dream that he will be able to strike it rich by hatching an odd chicken such as one having two heads and seven legs. He can’t keep them alive and stores them in glass jars as a sort of prize. After ten years of struggling to make ends meet, the boy’s mother decides that they need a change of life. Still trying to get up in this world, they move again to a town where the mother believes her son will be able to have a better life. They open a restaurant there and his father decides he would like to act like he was happy in order to entertain their customers. Still holding on to his dream, the father has brought with him the jars of odd chickens. He has placed them on a shelf where they can be seen. He truly believes that one day he will be able to make money with them, because people like to see odd things. One