Dad
The image of Dad is a leading one in the novel. The narrator tells the story of his life and his Dad had the giant influence on it. Dad was a good man; he was born in a dysfunctional family where, except him were many other children, his father was a violent and crazy man, he had many women and even sometimes his daughters were pregnant with his children. Dad’s only point in life was toil. He worked hard to provide his seven children with all they needed , he spent a lot of time teaching them, and believed that one day they will be successful people with good education and goals in life.
Pro wrestling match
One day Dad presented the narrator and his brother Bill with tickets to live pro wrestling. Boys were fascinated but mostly with the atmosphere on the arena rather than with the wrestling itself: “At the Baltimore Arena we were in full effect. We peered down from cheap seats so high that the ring was our own gift box. There were white people everywhere, and this was the most I’d ever seen of them”. Those people were wearing jeans shorts and they were eating popcorn and hotdogs. The image represents the boy’s attitude toward the white race and his belief that white doesn’t mean clean and pure, and black is not always dirty.
Incident with a bed
Ta-Nehisi and his elder brother Big Billy were wrestling on their parents’ bad and in the pinnacle of the fight they broke it. Boys were scared that Dad will beat them so they leave the room and run away to their room, pretending they were sleeping. When Dad came and asked them who did that Ta-Nehisi told that he didn’t know and Bill told the truth. Then father took them downstairs and told them to get out and wrestle on the yard. The boys were staring at each other without any idea what they have to do, so then they started wrestling on the dirt thinking that their father is watching them, but he probably didn’t. This image is a vivid example of dad’s education, and its main idea is that one should be responsible for one’s actions.
America
America is a great country where all dreams come true – that is how many people are taught to think. But it is not like that, there is also poverty, desperation and violence in this promised land. Ta-Nehisi’s dad was sure of it and he had his own mind about this country. He believed that he stood with those who had come to believe that condition of black people was not reducible to vicious stereotypes. The worst of this country’s condition—poor, diseased, illiterate, crippled, dumb—was not just a ”tumor to be burrowed out but proof that this whole body was a tumor, that America was not a victim of great rot but rot itself”. This imagery shows dad’s attitude towards the country he lives in; it is far from idyllic, as many people think of it.
