"Vacation from Boyhood" is a short story about two childhood acquaintances/fair-weather friends that have grown closer through social networking since going to their respective colleges. They have developed a friendship as "idea" men and debate various topics. Now, they decide that they need to plan a trip to become true "men" and to test and compare their "manliness." Through various distractions and bumbled attempts, the trip does not turned out as planned. However, while this piece is definitely about manliness, it is even-more about the friendship between these two man and asking such questions as: "What makes a man?" and "How do you develop self-worth as a man that is not 'manly'?"
The piece is strong in various areas. One of the strongest parts of the piece is the author's use of dialogue to both create a sense of competition between the two characters. The dialogue manages to both realistic and beneficial to the story in most places. In particular, I enjoyed the banter between the two characters as they try to prove their masculinity to each other after the narrator picks Connor up. Another strong part of the piece was the use of humor. Going back to the banter when the narrator picks Connor up, which is arguably the strongest part of the piece, the line "Well this morning after my mom woke me up, I was all like 'make me a sandwich for the trip,' and then she did," made me laugh. It reminded me of something many of my friends would joke about to my female friend that works at Subway. ("I walked in there and told her to make me a sandwhich, and she did.")
Another small but significant part of the story was when the author referenced to earlier in the story during the attempt to light the fireplace. Connor boasts about something that happened in Boy Scouts, just as the narrator said a few pages earlier that Connor was likely dying to do. This made me, as a reader, feel like he was let in on some sort of inside joke.
That being said, there are some issues with the piece. The weakest part of this piece is the back-story. Much of it seems weak and confused. This is mostly a by-product of two issues. The first of these issues is that the author used many passive sentences when writing that section. Many times, the sentences would be structured in a way that would bog down the reader, making the section more-difficult to read than need be. For example, "The remembrance of the sense of accomplishment and freedom was inspiring when I imagined stomping around the crunchy orange and brown autumn forest as if I were the king of it all" instead of "I remembered the sense of accomplishment and freedom that inspired me as I imagined being the king of the crunchy orange and brown autumn forest." The second major issue in the back-story is that many of the phrases are vague generalities and examples of "telling me" instead of "showing me" what the character is about.
One more weakness of the story was the constant telling that the story was about manliness. Many times, the character would make references to things that would be "manly" enough or that this would show his manliness. I feel that these are unnecessary and actually degrading to the work as a whole because they make me feel like I'm being beat over the head with one of the major themes of the piece when the narrator is doing a perfectly fine job of showing us that the entire trip is a naive competition of manliness. I don't thing that I need to be told that as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment