role reversal

After reading only about 20 pages of the book, I noticed the contrast between Phil's description of his father from the past and his treatment of him in the present. His memories of him from adolescence are of a man "all powerful and determining our purpose" (p 16); however, in the present, Phil is treating his father as if he is the child. Although he knows his father has the tumor, Phil decides to hide that from him. He also arranges for the news to be delivered in the doctor's suburban office to prevent him from being "frightened out of his skin, at least for a little while" (p 17). Phil is treating his father the way one would treat a young child, delaying bad news and presenting it in what he hopes will be the least harmful way. Phil describes the effect of seeing his father's MRI as seeing the entirety of his personality and the reason's for the way he acted. However, the tumor is eating away at all of those personality traits. Maybe Phil sees the tumor as destroying his fathers power and control, and he feels he must take over that role in their relationship.

Destiny

Having only read to page 40, I feel a great affinity and sympathy towards Phil. The scene that most grabbed me was when he made the wrong turn off the turnpike and wound up driving to the cemetery where his mother was buried. I certainly believe in a supernatural force and the thought that everything happens for a reason. Just as Phil is reminded of “Hamlet’s contemplating the skull of Yorick,” I am reminded also of the graveyard scene in Hamlet when Hamlet says: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,/Rough-hew them how we will” (5.2.11-12). Hamlet understands that everyone is given a destiny that is inescapable; the different choices that one makes may either delay or hasten that fated outcome, but those choices cannot alter it. I believe that Phil was destined to go to the cemetery and reconnect at his mother’s grave. On his way to visit his father and tell him the tragic news, I feel it fitting for him to see where his father will be buried. What are your thoughts on this ironic turn in Phil’s travels to see his father? Was it destiny?