Grace Paley’s short story “A Conversation with My Father” is more than a story about two characters telling stories, it is a depiction of two generations and the elements between them that differ. One of the underlying themes of the story is the concept of hope and how the two characters individually define it. While on one hand there is the father who is at the end of his life succumbing to heart disease who views the world from a perspective of no longer having hope and on the other there is the narrator, his daughter, who refuses to abandon hope and view things from this perspective. By examining the differing views these two characters have of this particular concept, the reader can see the how the generational gap differentiates them as well as gain an understanding of how individuals personally value hope. …show more content…
From his opening words, the reader can detect an air of terminus in the way in which he views the world, a viewpoint that can be assumed is the product of his body’s betrayal of him. This is not to say that he has not earned the right to do so, as he has lived a full life up to this point and is naturally disheartened in that now he no longer possesses the strength he once did. He is a man who is defined by his time. He constantly asks his daughter to craft her story after the example set by master storytellers such as Chekov and Turgenev, the writers who had defined his life, set in the ways to which he is accustomed. His focus on the details of the story that his daughter tells also separate the two. He is concerned with the makeup of the narrative, while she is only concerned with the