Manning and Vowell are two children, and writers, who approach their relationships with their respective fathers with different styles and intensity. Somehow their unique experiences with their father reflect their own personalities and that in turn seeped into the style in which they write in. Each author described reconciliation with a facet of their relationship with their father, and these certain realizations were exactly what prompted them to share their experiences in descriptive, emotional essays.
From what Manning narrates, the dynamics of their family seem to be stemming from a typical family setting wherein each member’s niche is clearly cut out. Their father is the strong, firm breadwinner, and their mother is the supportive home-maker. Manning seems to be the kind of person who experienced the usual hang-ups of being a teenager, emotional awkwardness towards family included.
His father, probably having an alpha-male touch to him, will have probably found it hard to connect with his son properly, having a history of sportiness and testosterone-filled youth and adulthood as well. This would probably explain the “physical communication” that he shares with his son. Manning’s being into sports may also have contributed to the communication barrier with him and his father. When Manning’s father got older, he seemed to have contemplated the existence of this barrier between his son and him.
His intentions had always been pure, but he has only ever channeled his feelings into the only way he knows he can get through to his son- through sports. Both Brad Manning and his father realized the bequeathal of responsibility of being the strong figure in the family in their arm wrestling match where Brad Manning won against his father. Brad Manning may have been late to realize what that match and the hug meant, but his father did, and it probably also meant for him that he is now giving his son independence.
It was a beautiful moment in their relationship, the silent but physical and transparent act of pure love that Brad Manning’s father shown in. They would probably never speak of it again, but it will always be there, and they would know what it means to them and their relationship. For Sarah Vowell, her relationship with her father is a peppered with their differences. From their differences in interests to their differences in their political beliefs, they have always disagreed on a lot of things.
Vowell grew up in a peculiar environment, her childhood is surrounded with memories of guns and rifles and all kinds of firearms, with her father being the mastermind and their mother and her twin condoning it. However this environment failed to influence her, as she pursued another area of interest: the arts. This would probably strike their father and twin (who share the same interests) as strange, and consider her even stranger. Add to that her liberal stand on politics. But her father had never stopped her from pursuing what she wanted, and though they were always arguing was open to her ideas.
Sarah Vowell’s extreme opposition to her father’s preferences, to the point that she described her residence “a house divided” only emphasized that her will and her passion was as strong as her father’s, which she probably got from him. When she finally realizes this, she now also realizes that her bond with her father is strengthened by their differences, ironically enough. This would be why she wants it to hurt when it comes to the time that she has to use the homemade cannon to scatter her father’s ashes.
She will have lost an instrument of an important part of her identity. Each writer made use of different style to convey their insights. Manning used symbolic images and was descriptive of their emotion, while Vowell used wit and humor. Both were effective methods used as an advantage because for Manning, the use of more emotional text contrasted the very physical relationship with his father, and Vowell’s slightly off-kilter narration contrasted the many arguments she had with her father.
