Boyhood Friendships in Frank Conroy and William Maxwell passages
Uploaded by snow_shoes31 on Feb 23, 2002
Boyhood friendships exist from moment to moment in and unrealistic and
imaginative state, never taking time to be concerned with each others
appearances or long term plans. Each of the two passages clearly support
this view point, the first authored by Frank Conroy and the second by
William Maxwell. These two passages prove the point that boy hood
friendships are lived in the moment by using point of view and imagery.
In the first passage by Frank Conroy the story is conveyed through
the eyes of Conroy as a young boy, from his point of view. By using point of
view this story is a prime example of how young boys live in the moment and
have excellent imaginations. The opening sentence of this passage states
that he doesn’t “remember everything about meeting Tobey,” only that he
wondered “how he could walk on the hot, sharp coral with out shoes.” No
mention of what he looked like, what he was wearing at the time, or what he
talked like. The second example found in this passage comes from line 28.
“The first project was a tree-house built precariously high on a tall pine. The
climb was difficult for anyone who didn’t know the hand-holds we’d
constructed at the hardest parts.” Again, the young boys’ imaginations were
running rampant, they devised secret climbing techniques, as if anyone else
would be bothered to climb the tree to get to their tree house, Conroy
himself has already said several times that there was no one else around.
The children enjoyed using their imaginations to make everything all the
more interesting. Another well painted example of Conroy’s imagination as a
young boy occurred when he and his playmate discovered a dead mule. “We
talked about that mule for weeks. What was its fascination? Death
dramatized, something of unbelievable importance being revealed right in
front of us.” (49-51) Again, the two boyhood friends used their imagination
to pretend that this dead mule was something important. It didn’t just die,
it died for a very specific and “important” reason. Boyhood friendships are
lived moment to moment using their imaginations to make life interesting.
William Maxwell’s description of a brief moment in his child hood is
excellently supplemented by his use of imagery to allow the reader to feel as
if they are there with them and that they are imagining the same dreams as
the boys’ were imagining in their youth. However, as with the first passage,
this passage also shows how...