The Red Convertible
In this story we have these two brothers who seemingly have
a tight bond. Because they both came across a bit of money, they were able to
purchase a “red convertible” in which they drove all summer long together, “road
tripping.” They met a girl and drove to Alaska and lived care-free. But then
things changed and one of the brothers got called to War, the Vietnam War to be
exact. After he came back he was a
different person. The narrator tried to
help his brother by destroying the red convertible so that he could fix it up,
which worked for a while. Sadly, at the end of the story, the brother killed
himself due to the post effects of the war and the narrator let the car run
into the river.
Where to start? In the
beginning of the story I was thinking that this was going to be just a story
about Native Americans in the “Americas,” but we learn quickly that it is more
than that. First of all, we see a different time compared to now. These
brothers decided to just take a road trip for the summer. In this trip they had
no cares or worries, just free-falling in a sense. When they met the girl from Alaska, I was
thinking that she would become a part of their group and maybe be a bigger part
of the story. Her and her family really was
just another story to tell.
I want to back track for a second. Let’s look at the
beginning of the story, when the younger brother was talking about his luck
with money and his job. I think that this is kind of foreshadowing because he
is talking about how he “always had a way to get money” and basically he said
that he was a little luckier than his brother. Which he brings this up again,
when they get back from their road trip and his brother gets called to war and
he says that he was luckier with numbers.
You really don’t see the ending coming at all. I mean it
makes sense though. This kind of work was probably not given the respect that
it should have been given during the time that it was released because people
didn’t want to hear about the negative stuff in life, like everything we read
in the beginning of the semester about Slavery, etc. This story really sheds light on a couple of
different aspects of “American life,”
even these kids aren’t exactly “Americans”
they are still subjected to the effects (negative and positive) of the “American”
government.
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