A Fortune
The short story A Fortune is written by Joy Monica T. Sakaguchi. In the short story A Fortune the reader acquires knowledge about a first-person narrator, a young boy who shares the same destiny as the little boy we hear about later in the story despite of differences in social status. They both hunger after acknowledgement from their fathers, they have both been ignored and mistreated by their fathers; they both suffer from the same privations and both are searching for redemption.

The short story A Fortune begins in medias res and is written in past tense and is told through a male first-person narrator, which leads to an understanding of the narrator’s inner thoughts and feelings. The narrator’s appearance is superficially described as rather unattractive, but his name remains unknown for the reader which creates anonymity. Through several flashbacks the reader gradually understands the narrator’s childhood, personality and social status in society. His social status is emphasized by the writing style in the short story as well – his usage reflects his social inheritance. By using contractions, slang and everyday language the reader gets the impression that the first-person narrator belongs to a lower social group in the society. This finds expression in sentences like: ’Boy would he yell at me’ or ‘My ma tried to raise me well’ where the narrator uses slang, or for instance the sentence ‘Hey, kid, you lost?’ where the verb “are” is omitted. However, the reader does not get any further details about the geographic location of the setting, and the historical time of the short story is unknown for the reader too. Though this lack of historical or geographical information the short story and its themes become relevant at all times in all places. The narrator’s age is difficult to decide as well. Since he visits his mother in her trailer now and then the reader must assume that the narrator has left home, but at the same time he still has a very childish and naïve belief in his father’s future return, which raises doubts about his age. The relationship between the first-person narrator and his father is especially worth noticing. As a child his father taught the narrator how to steal wallets. Once a month the father turned up, received the stolen wallets, paid the narrator a little money and then left again. The narrator never counted the money from his father because he ‘didn’t wanted to know how much Pop thought I was worth’ – he is afraid of recognizing that his father is not interested in him as a person. The narrator has therefore experienced a lack of nearness from his father through his childhood, and tries to gain some accept and acknowledgment from his father. The pickpocketing is the only way the narrator is able to relate to his father, it’s the only way he has ever been able to gain some attention from his father. One day his father does not return at home to pick up the stolen wallets, but the narrator still keeps stealing and saves the cash for his father. The narrator is still mentally fixed in his search for acceptance from the father. It doesn’t seem like the narrator has a close bond to anyone. In the meantime the narrator’s mother has tried powerlessly to prevent her son from ending up stealing like his father. By reading and collecting small quotes from fortune cookies the first-person narrator perhaps tries to change or predict his own destiny. The narrator has tried to find his fortune in his failed relationship to his father through his life, but instead he maybe substitutes his eager for happiness with fortune cookies. The same day as he meets the boy Jeremy at the fish marked the narrator gets an omen in his fortune cookie: ‘A change in your daily routine will lead you to treasure’. Normally the narrator does not steal on Sundays, but he breaks his weekly routine when he notices the boy and his father and steals the father’s wallet. The boy’s relationship to his father can be seen as a reflection of the narrator’s relationship to his father. The narrator sees the little boy’s desire to please his father and his desire to belong somewhere or to someone, and most likely he recognizes these feelings in himself without knowing it. Even though the father is physical present, the boy experiences the same lack of acknowledgement from his father as the first-person narrator experienced from his own father in his childhood. In connection with this it is relevant to examine the title of the short story: A Fortune. The title may both refer to property or to fate – it is unclear. The narrator and Jeremy share the same destiny in spite of differences in social inheritance, and both of their fathers put materialistic fortunes above their intangible fortunes – their sons. Neither of the fathers is able to acknowledge or realize their son’s value. By being confronted with Jeremy’s density, the narrator is indirectly confronted with his own destiny and own relationship to his father. ‘The wallet was still in my pocket. I pulled it out and tossed it in a garbage can instead of dropping it somewhere so it could be found and returned. That guy didn’t need his credit cards or cash or eelskin wallet. He didn’t know what a fortune he had anyway’. The narrator reaches a new understanding at the end of the story about himself, his own childhood and relationship to his father.
On account of his recognition the narrator tries to give the boy what he has always missed and longed for from his father: acknowledgement, acceptance and appreciation. ‘Time is of the es-es-essence, use it wi-se-lee’ one of the fortune cookies says, and this is exactly what the narrator tries to do. ‘You’re tremendous, remember?’ he keeps repeating to the boy, and maybe partly to himself, when he follows the boy home and gives him the collected fortune cookie papers – he gives the boy what the narrator himself has used as explanation and comfort.

A Fortune is written in 2000 but the short story focuses on an actual topic. By meeting Jeremy the first-person narrator is confronted with his own dilemmas in life. Hereby the narrator obtains a new recognition about his own childhood and relation to his father, which mentally detaches him from his formerly fixed and hopeless search for acceptance and acknowledgement from his absent father.

--------------------------------------------
[ 1 ]. Page 1 – line 8
[ 2 ]. Page 1 – line 15
[ 3 ]. Page 2 – line 78
[ 4 ]. Page 1 – line 13 – 14
[ 5 ]. Page 2 – line 39
[ 6 ]. Page 4 – line 157 – 160
[ 7 ]. Page 3 – line 103 – 104 (Real sentence; Time is of the essence use it wisely)
[ 8 ]. Page 4 – line 153