Essay: “A Dash for Freedom”

ESSAY

Introductions

1.
Today lots of marriages are broken because of fights but many marriages are also broken because one of the spouses deserts his or her family. They did not live this life they really wanted to live. Maybe they have a dream they want to fulfil, or they want to have another kind of lifestyle.

2.
I like this story. It is sweet, fond and funny even though it is the old story once more: The mother-in-law who fights against a possible son-in-law because she hates the truth that her daughter is a grown up woman who might soon leave her parents. In all this mess the father-in-law sits back in his chair saying nothing. What are his feelings, his thoughts? Usually he does not say anything because he does not want more trouble but what does he actually think? That is what this story is about.

I would like to answer .........

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Being young is about a lot of things, mostly it is the age where you have the opportunities to fulfil your dreams - and have the courage to do it. A lot of people do not realize this until it is too late, Ray Drower is one of them. He had so many dreams but he never realized any of them and when his teen-age daughter meets a young man, Andy, Who lives his life exactly the way he wants it, Ray has a lot of regrets. In what follows I shall characterize Ray Drower and also look at Andy, his ways of behaving, and why Ray likes him.

4.
In my class we have been given the short story “A Dash for freedom” and now I am to answer two questions out of four. It was a hard decision for me to take, ut I have made a choice. In the following I would like to write about question b. about Andy and what Ray thinks of him and question c. where I have to explain and comment on Eleanor’s reaction to Penny and Andy’s relationship. 1.
Ray is fascinated with Andy. He works hard and has fun (line 48). He is a big and strong young man who rides a motorbike. Motocross is his hobby. Andy’s motorbike is very well maintained (line 55). He is a carpenter and he lives with his parents and his two sisters in a flat. Andy goes moonlighting in the evenings and in the weekends to make more money, he likes expensive clothes and motorbikes are expensive too. While he was working at one of those moonlighting jobs he met Penny in the home of one of her friends.

2. Andy does not believe in exams etc. “And Andy remarked...anyway” (line 64). This is shown in his use of language “this your ....pen? (lines 18-19). He does not understand the way Ray and Eleanor live “He could not ...machine” (lines 49-53). Andy is open and possesses a lot of selfconfidence “Andy didn’t give ... for a ricle” (lines 47-48).He can also not understand the way they raise Penny “But it is only...not late” (lines 70-71) and “Andy was amazed... an hour” (lines 27-28).

3.

Ray is very curious and not afraid of asking questions about things he has never done. This is seen in the passage where Andy and Penny want to go camping through Europe together, Ray has never taken a girl camping and therefore he asks questions about their journey (line 89).

4.

Andy is like the physical realization of Ray’s dreams. He is living life the way he wants to, he works in order to buy the things he likes, and he is earning well, despite the fact that he is not well educated. T his is shown in l. 64 where he says that he does not believe in exams, and his language is also pointing in that direction “This your Mum and Dad then” (ll. 18-19).

Conclusions

1.
The writer of “A Dash for Freedom” wants to tell us to live life. He tells us not to just stop living our own lives just because we get married and have a family. His message is that we must realize that work and family are not the only important things in life, and that we shall not always do what others expect us to do. Instead of just listening to others, we ought to do what we want, to keep getting new experiences. In short, to live life and have fun. Ray has not realized that this is very important for being happy with life.

2.
This short story describes very well the regrets of a man whose youth is long over. One day, when his daughter is almost adult, he realizes that he misses out on a lot of things in his youth. He was so busy getting the best education and a secure life that he forgot to live his life. He knows he cannot share his dreams with his wife because of their different backgrounds but when he discovers that his daughter has some of the same dreams of freedom and makes them come true through Andy, he is jealous. He wants the adventure too and when he finally gets the chance he does not let it pass away. He takes off on Andy’s motorbike, perhaps for a long ride, perhaps not. I am sure that when he returns he is ready to live the secure life with Eleanor again, knowing he has achieved a long hidden dream and having learned something: It is never too late to make your dreams come true!