“A Few Notes for Orpheus”, by Don Bailey Essay

In the short story A Few Notes for Orpheus Don Bailey portrays the protagonist, Jake as an isolated, resentful, and hypocritical man.As the story begins, Jake is sitting alone in his room, life history in self-isolation. He is always telling himself that he homogeneouss his privacy, although sometimes he feels _too_ alone. The only if contact Jake has with the outside creation is through his telephone, and as he receives a phone call from his mother, a woman who he hasnt spoken to in a long time, he wishes he had disconnected his phone, or never had it installed. Jake is almost corpus sternum to hear her voice, but assumes that something is wrong because she never called him. Jake is uninformed about what goes on within his family. His mother has never once mentioned cigarettes that he could remember, cigarettes that would later result in his father developing cancer. Jake also has never pick out the effort to re-establish a obligate with those who he has lost contact with, suc h as his mother, father, wife, or daughter.Jake resents the incident that he is so isolated but doesnt want to take the initiative to change his lifestyle. He resents how neglectful he has been of his daughter, Bernice, and resentful that he has never been competent to live up to his fathers expectations as a child. When Jake brings Bernice along to finally meet her grandfather, she is effortlessly accepted by him. Jake has always try so hard to be accepted by his father, but all of his attemptshad either gone ignored like how the old man hadnt been around when he was awarded with a certificate in Red Cross life-saving, or when they had failed. He has always resented that about his father his attitude towards his frailness. His father had been somewhat understanding, so he showed it through his polite smiles. The nullity of those smiles had hurt Jake through the years, stripping him of an enjoyable childhood and eventually making him resent every font of it.Jake, who is oblivi ous to his hypocrisy, doesnt initially realize the number of statues he has made. Throughout the story we are undetermined to frequent statue-making and Jakes dislike of statues because Statues were the way other people made you stand still like dying. People loved you, made you their hero, and killed you so they could build a monument to their feelings. Jake has made statues of the old chick, the living soap opera his wife, the reformer the kid, the infiltrator and the old man. The statue of his old man is significantly different to the shriveled old man he actually is. Jake has always thought of his father as cosmos bigger. Jake also included his fathers infamous polite smile, one that had been used to overwhelm the shame that he felt in regards to Jake.Bernice has never had a complete statue of Jake because Jake wouldnt give her decent time to make one. She knew Jake as the man that used to live with her, not as her father. During their trip to the cottage, Jake allows him self to bond with Bernice. She knew all the gestures that led to making him stand still for statue making to become a hero, even if it was only for one day. This is the first step to Bernice experiencing what it is like to have a father. Even though Jake wasnt able to bond with his father, he didnt have to put Bernice through the same(p) pain or make the same mistakes.Don Bailey helps us perceive Jake as an isolated, resentful, and hypocritical man by exposing us to Jakes opinions concerning statues, his family, and his childhood. Jakes pain growing up ultimately contributed to the construction of his beliefs and would further teach him a lesson on how to avoid making the same mistakes that his father made, so his daughter would not have to experience the same pain while she grew up.