Daughter

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Father

As the title makes clear, the story recounts a conversation between the protagonist, the daughter, and the antagonist, her father. The father is described in the story's opening as an eighty-six year old man who is confined to his bed. Despite his health problems, he is mentally alert. A former doctor who became an artist in retirement, he is still interested in "details, crafts, [and] technique." He asks his daughter to write a "simple story" about "recognizable people," like the stories written by Guy de Maupassant and Anton Chekhov, nineteenth-century European writers whose stories were realistic and often tragic. The narrator tries to comply, but her father is critical of both versions of the story she made up for him. In the story's final line, he asks his daughter how long it will be before she faces up to the tragedy in life. According to...