Student Essay on Romulas My Father

The love between Romulus and Raymond remains distant through much of their relationship. Their attachment is expressed more often through actions then words. Feelings tend to come together in expression only when guilt or sorrow is most deeply felt. While conditions for postwar migrants may have denied the luxury and wealth, the strength of largely unspoken feelings was able to over rule there way of life.

Even the young family struggles in Europe, Romulus displays a fatherly affection that extends beyond most people's idea of such love. Before finding work Romulus sometimes walks eighty kilometers to get milk, beans or potatoes, denying himself so that Raimond can have more. Left exhausted by such efforts to get food, Romulus `fainted from hunger' on more then one occasion. In Germany, Christina already shows signs of her mental illness, neglecting her baby and leaving it in the care of her family. These distancing efforts of raimond's mother drew Romulus closer to his son, having to care for and feed the child who is offered little interest and love from an unwell mother.

With Christina continuing to swing between attachment and depression, after emigrating, farther and son live a rough and harsh life in rural Victoria. Although a constant mental presence in their own lives father and son spend little time in each other's company. At their most physical distances Raimond travels to boarding school in Melbourne, while his farther works multiple shifts in town. The rough nature of this life enforces a kind of practicality that leaves little room for expressions of feeling or kindness. After being smacked by his father, Raimond sarcastically makes the situation worst, by shouting to Romulus, `you don't love me'. Involved in a motorbike accident just a few days after, the deeply troubling effect of this childish statement on Romulus is made clear to Raimond: unable to speak properly, the only words that Romulus can wheeze out to his son as he lays in bed are `never believe that I don't love you'. Having confronted sympathy in his spoken words with a determination and importance that strengthens the bond between them.

Nevertheless, some years later, Romulus and Raimond fight again - this time over what Raimond became aware of his fathers blindness to a separation between ethics that were wanted and the real world ethics. The reliability of these fights is a major component of their relationship during his teenage years, for Romulus's character and illness and Raimond's `youth occasionally combined explosively'. It was in one of the more violent explosions that the bond between farther and son is brought into sharp clarity for Raimond. After a physical scuffle, Romulus suggests that if they could not agree, they should not see each other again. Strangely enough, the power of such a break between the two even in suggestion compels an even deeper sense of the respect they share, `I loved him too deeply and knew that after what we had shared at frogmore, no quarrel could estrange us'. Raimond realizes.

Like the metal work so skillfully and exactly shaped by Romulus, the love between farther and son is molded to its shape only through care. Once set, however their attachment is unbreakable. They don't care about there way of life, wealth or luxury in which they live in but, rather value the principles of love and respect for each other.