Pimkwan Chalasithipong

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

June 21, 2010

Reading Response 1

Botched Plans

“They were to eat peaches, as planned” (25). This intentional mode that begins William Saroyan’s story “Gaston” eventually becomes simple past tense that records, one by one, actions between a father and a daughter, none of which is the girl eating peaches as planned. She seems to come very close to eating “a peach with somebody in the seed” (28), but the hope of her being with her father and sharing so much with him is cut short by another get-together, “a little party for somebody’s daughter who was also six” (30).

This is a story about hope dashed, intimacy interrupted, a blooming imagination nipped, and interaction thwarted. The mother’s phone call—a long distance, disembodied voice—has more immediacy and impact than a breathing blood father standing next to the girl, unable to get close enough even to hug his own daughter (32). It is a story about loss. Most heartbreakingly, it is a loss of physical and emotional personal contact that is careful and attentive, to the triumph of a superficial, removed charade of connection that is categorical, rote, and heartless.

Works Cited

Tirakan Sinsawang

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

June 20, 2010

Reading Response 1

What a Girl Wants

She is very old, especially for a young girl of six; a preschooler who has learned already to cry inside (31). William Saroyan’s “Gaston” gives us a girl who, at the beginning of the story is interested in peaches (“she had seen peaches in a box outside a small store and she had stopped to look at them” 25), then she wants to know “Who is it?” (27) that climbs out of the open peach seed. The six-year-old is curious about things around her, and, sensitive to the adult close by, considers the new-found bug as a fellow being: a “who,” not a “what.”

The girl wants to thrive and to belong, and she projects these desires onto Gaston: “‘Well, we’re not going to squash him, that’s one thing we’re not going to do” (28), “Put him back?,” “Can he live in our house at all?” She claims her father’s home in Paris as hers too, with “our.” However, after a brief phone call with her mother, we discover her dilemma. Her need to belong is conflicted because her mother’s desires are incompatible with her father’s. In order to thrive and to fit in where she lives, she has had to prioritize her desires.

She is her father’s daughter, nevertheless, and has learned also that “the important thing is what you want, not what I want” (29). The most important thing is what her mother wants, not what she wants. That she puts aside her wants for her mother’s (like her father does for her), in a way shows that she is ironically more mature than her mother. The six-year-old defers to the thirty-year-old’s wishes as if she is the adult and the woman is the child.

For a girl who has to cope with and manage a complexity of desires of diverse individuals that affect her life since so early an age, her wants seem unlike the usual child’s; no hugs or kisses, no peaches, no whimsical wants, but reasoned, calculated and non-self-centered decisions. “Long ago she had decided she didn’t like crying because if you ever started to cry you almost couldn’t stop, and she didn’t like that at all” (31). But at the end of the day, the girl, despite her brave tearless face and formally extended hand to shake her father’s goodbye, perhaps still wants what any girl regardless of age or maturity wants, and that is to best live the life she has been dealt and to be happy. In short, she wants not to cry. And this is a story that confirms that very old, very basic, and very humble wish.

Works Cited