Analysis of Gaston W. Saroyan

Gaston by William Saroyan

William Saroyan was an American dramatist and author. His characters are always simple and not very happy as a fact, but he usually writes about them with a note of hope a bit of warm. Saroyan touches some universal problems of our world, the problems of the human souls.

The story under analysis , “Gaston” , is  about little 6-years-old girl who comes to her father, who lives in Paris.   They meet each other not very often. At the moment they are eating peaches they have found a flawed one with a small bug inside of it. Fathers calls it Gaston and creates a story about his life. The little girl has been taken a great Interest in it so she`s asked her father to find one more spoilt one with another but for her. While father is looking for another flawed peaches girl has been called by her mother who has disappeared all girls illusions about Gaston saying that it`s just a bug and usually people kill them so the girl has done the same.

Appealing to the etymology we can know that Gaston is the original french name which has a great history which took a part in the middle ages in the South of France where was situated a region with a name Gascon. So the author put a sense of an oxymoron or metaphor in the same time to the very title of text cause we realize that usual bug cannot have such a history.

The atmosphere of the story is rather pathetic  . The story begins with the direct description of the father:” he was kind of funny. He had the biggest mustache she had ever seen on anybody; it was a lot of red and brown hair under his nose and around the ends of his mouth. He wore a blue-and-white striped jersey instead of a shirt and tie, and no coat. His arms were covered with the same hair, only it was a little lighter and thinner.” By this description of the father the author introduces us his character who is comic and strange, we don`t used to meet such people in our life as his daughter and former wife too may be just in some circus and this fact creates the certain atmosphere of humour. Her father differs totally from the mother, they live in different ways, he`s more romantic, he lives in Paris and the mom is more pragmatic prefer living in New York, so the author reveals  the contrast between that people who had been one time together, they are like two poles so may it was the very reason of their union in the past.

In the description of the meal we can observe love and care in  father`s behavior who tries to give the best to his child: « He placed the biggest and best-looking peach on the small plate in front of the girl, and then took the flawed peach». Then they`ve found a bug in flawed one and the father in that moment is desclosed as a very imaginative person cause he creats a whole story around this bug giving him a name - Gaston. The father does it with an aim to make fun his lovely daughter, to attract her attention and he has achieved his propose, she starts to ask a lot about it : “Who is it? Where does he live? Can he live in our house ?”.

The atmosphere when the bug appears is so pathetic ,cute , naïve and even childish: « two feelers poked out from the cavity. They were attached to a kind of brown knob-head, which followed the feelers, and then two large legs took a strong grip on the edge of the cavity and hoisted some of the rest of whatever it was out of the seed, and stopped there a moment, as if to look around. The creature paused only a fraction of a second, and then continued to come out of the seed, to walk down the eaten side of the peach to wherever it was going.»

There are some certain symbols in the text. For example we can compare peaches here with two houses, two modes of life - of the mother`s and the father`s. Furthermore the father is clearly compared here with that Gaston. He`s strange for this world especially in the mother`s eyes:” He is a bug. He is ugh. Everybody hollers when a bug comes out of an apple, but you don’t holler or anything.” This construction reflects the girl`s mother’s view on the insects and strangers. The girl changes her mind to the same in that moment despite the fact that she was agreed with her dad for the first time. Children are to repeat their parent`s behavior : « The man studied the seed dweller, and so, of course, did the girl». In the same time we get it that the mom is more authoritative for the girl and it`s normal and logic I think cause the girl is brought up with her mom and they lives together for the most time.

Although it`s a little bit pity for her father cause we see that he really love his baby: “Do you want me to?”-“Of course not, but the important thing is what you want, not what I want.”  By the way this dialogue reveals , that the father doesn’t want to influence on his child so he is very polite and obliging with her. He gives her freedom of choice. So we can guess that he is one who loves freedom a lot, the freedom of thinking and being at all again in the confrontation to the mom`s way to be who is disclosed as an imperative one and autoritarian in some way. As it occurs she called and informed , that « she was sending the chauffeur to pick her up and then tomorrow they would fly back to New York» . The girl tells her a story about a creature from the peach named Gaston, which interested her, but mom just replied: «You haven’t been with your father two days and already you sound like him. Somebody get a peach with a bug in it, and throws it away, but not him. He makes up a lot of foolishness about it. Is he funny?». The mother doesn`t give a chance to the girl to be a child. It seems that she doesn`t like this type of behavior at all and it is not clear for us what is real reason for it: is she such a person for all time may be cause her education or it is just an affectation of disdain( напускное пренебрежение) cause her still ambiguous attitude to her former husband.

When father comes back with peaches the girl already doesn`t want it , she again becomes terse, not interested in him and their tale and just informed him shortly :« We’re flying back to New York tomorrow» and repeated cruel mother`s phrase : «everybody squashes bugs and worms ». The phrases in dialogue between the daugher and the father become short and unemotional again.

As for me I liked the story a lot. It discloses how relationships between the parents influence on their children. In my opinion it`s in our power not to make our children to have the same attitude to their other parent as ours. We should respect the freedom of choice of our children and furthermore we are not to deprive them a childhood in any case.