In Richard Fords story Optimists he is writing about himself looking back into his life as a 15-year-old boy that is forty-three years old now. He uses dénouement by starting us off with background of information and allowing us to build up to this main idea and plot. He is very descriptive on his past, which is nice because I can see everything he’s explaining as if I am watching a movie in my head. For example
“You can hit a man In a lot of ways, I know that, and I knew that then because my father had told me. You can hit a man to insult him, or you can hit a man to bloody him, or to knock him down, or leave him out. Or you can hit a man to kill him. Hit him that hard. And that is how my father hit Boyd Mitchell as hard as he could, and the chest not in the face, the way someone might think who didn’t know about him.”
This story gives me a sense of resonance as well, certain parts of the story leave a long impression on me and makes me think about the situations of the different people in this story. I believe that the mother was having an affair with Boyd Mitchell and that’s why the wife Penny of Boyd wasn’t surprised by the death of Boyd and why the mother wasn’t in shock. At the end of the story the mother and Frank see each other in a grocery store and are pleasant with each other, but they never really knew each other and almost seemed as the mother was flirting with him. At the end of there encounter the mother is very strange and asks the question
“Did you ever think,” My mother said, snow freezing in her hair. “Did you ever think that then that I was in love with Boyd Mitchell? Anything like that? Did you ever?”
Though he answers his mother with a very direct answer, even now being the age of 43 and her in her 60s he can’t tell her mother the full truth on how he feels.