In Tobias Wolff’s “The Night in Question,” we gain a close look at the bonds formed in terrible circumstances and how they effect different characters’ lives. The story follows Frances when she goes to visit her younger brother Frank and delves into how their abusive childhood has shaped the course of their lives.
The story begins with Frances coming over to help her brother through a heartbreak, but she arrives to find he isn’t really torn up over the issue. Already, this sets up the relationship between the siblings, with Frances rushing to help Frank at every obstacle. Later, we find out just how far Frances has gone to help him, nearly destroying her marriage in the process and never saying no to any of her brother’s whims. This fact doesn’t go unnoticed by the main character either, as she is keenly aware of how her brother exploits this trait of hers. He does so within the first few paragraphs as well, getting her to stay and listen to a rather dark sermon Frank had heard that afternoon. Before he can begin, though, we get a taste of the destructive path he has been on- crashing his sister’s car on a highway and nearly dying from a seizure during detox of what we later find out to be alcohol.
Frank begins to tell the tale of a railroad man named Mike Bolling and his son Benny. He continues on to reveal a normal, happy family backstory for these characters, all the while Frances informs of the contrasting childhood they experienced. We learn of her father’s abuse of Frank and eventually of Frances, consisting of food deprivation and physical encounters. We learn of their mother’s death as well, most likely from heart related issues, and how she, quite literally, closed her eyes to her husband’s treatment of Frank. During this, Frances even thinks of how their lives might have been different had their mother only intervened, then continues on to explain how they played out instead. She reveals how she stepped up for her brother, fighting her own father for him, and how she became his protector, a title that took up her life.
Frank then implies how the sermon ended, as Mike’s boy had wandered to the engine room, leaving his father to choose between the boy and a train full of people. He goes into a specific biblical saying that many recovering addicts and those who have faced hard things in life cling to- God gives you only what you can handle, and does not ask you to do what you can’t do. At this, we see the opposing viewpoints of two people dealing with the same memories of childhood abuse. Frances denies it entirely, believing that one life, the life of a loved one, shouldn’t be sacrificed for the greater, and asked her brother to make the same choice- figuratively- that Mike made. Frank says that is isn’t a choice he’d have to make, in a way revealing he would choose his sister, and sticking to his religious guns. Frances refuses to let him get away with this answer and prepares to fight, just like she had been doing all her life.
In the end, the story is about choices. Frank and Frances’ mother’s choice to stay blind to it all and the abandonment they faced from her, their father’s choice to abuse them and leave them with lasting scars, Frank’s choice to shift the reason for everything that happened to him onto God, Frances’ choice to protect her brother no matter what, and Mike’s choice to let his boy die for the train full of people. It studies the lasting impact these choices have on those directly and indirectly touched by their effects. And it leaves off with a sister’s determination to make sure her brother is never alone in facing down those effects again.