ENGL 398 Study Guide - Quiz Guide: Present Tense

• School: University of Maryland
• Department: English
• Course: ENGL 398
• Professor: Gerhardt

Document Summary

You can love your parents, but the terrible things that people do to you stick with you for life. Though you can"t change them, you can accept them, and you can move on. He writes like his father has still just died, even as the book goes on. There are moments, however, where he writes about events in the past as he recalls them. The book is structured into small, paragraph-length entries that read like a stream of consciousness. I think it was organized this way because the structure is representative of the feelings of disjunction that narrator feels when his dad dies. The narrator feels disconnected and confused while trying to come to terms with his father"s death, and the structure of the book stands to serve that. The feelings of grief, anger, and relief read in a way that feels like a stream of consciousness, which is exactly how it when you"re experiencing those emotions.