Essay Questions

Deconstruct the activities which Hoffman’s father utilizes to socialize her.

Hoffman states, “My father, I think, in his excess of happiness, mistakes his firstborn for a son, and he tends in many ways to treat me like a little boy. He prefers to see me in “sports outfits”-meaning shorts or long pants- and with my hair cropped. Altogether he wants me to be sportif – good at games and all manner of physical endeavour…When I am five or so, he buys me a boy’s bicycle that is too high for me, and once I learn how to keep my balance, she pushes me off, shouting “faster, faster, faster!”- till I rush headlong into a fall.” Hoffman’s father depicts his unconscious yearning of a son based on how he wants his daughter to appear and the play activities which he wants her to engage in. Treating Hoffman like a boy, although she is a girl, mollifies his unconscious goal of having a real son.

Why does Hoffman’s aunt’s memory “arouse my mother’s (Hoffman’s) most alive pain"?

Hoffman recounts, "All the other members of my mother's family died as well - her mother, father, cousins, aunts. But it's her sister whose memory arouses my mother's most alive pain. She was so young, eighteen, or nineteen - "She hadn't even lived yet," my mother says - and she died in such a horrible way." Hoffman's mother's pain of being bereaved a younger sister has not be eliminated from her unconscious. She grieves her to date for her demise was premature and horrifying. Comparatively, Hoffman's mother has unconsciously accepted the demise of her other family members; thus, she does not grieve for them like she does for her sister.