What we believe in our life makes up the majority of the parts in you. We may believe in a common religion worldwide, or we may believe in objects, which are for personal benefits. But tradition, is a belief passed down, generation by generation, in your family or by the society. The Boat, Shaving, and The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World communicates the importance of tradition in a family and a society.
Alistair MacLeod, author of The Boat, displays the importance of tradition through the relationship between the man and his family. The protagonist in the story looks back at his childhood, remembering the choices he could have made. The man’s mother, afraid of their traditions fading away, wants him to become a fisherman like his father. While his mother is being conservative, his father wants him to study and does not want him “to go the path, dangerous and harsh, fishing the sea.” When the Mother finds out about her daughters getting married to a non-fisherman, “she did not care, for they were not of her people and they were not of her sea.” Because the man knows how conservative his mother is, he is afraid his mother would neglect him as she did towards his sisters. He is conscious that he is the only son and the only one who can support the fishing business, but also realizes his strong passion for studying. As he takes the road of studying and becomes a professor at Midwestern university, he is fond about his parents and “there came into my heart a very great love for my father and I thought it was very much braver to spend a life doing what you really do not want rather than selfishly following forever your own dreams and inclinations.”
Barry, the protagonist in Shaving written by Leslie Norris, also presents ideas of why tradition may be important in one’s life. It is not easy to face your father lying down ”fine-skinned and pallid” at the age of sixteen. His father, a victim of cancer, this story elaborates on Barry and the father’s feelings of passing down the authority through the family. The father “had to let go all his authority, handed it over” to Barry. Growing up and maturing is significant in life but at such a young age with a father so fragile, it is hard for Barry. The father knows his son can handle the responsibility “knowing his weakness and his mortality,” with a “curious humble pride.”
Lastly, a very strong example of how traditions affect one another is a piece written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, with the use of magical realism, illustrates how one person influences a society and stays as a tradition. A young man brought to shore of a small village nearby the sea, is named Esteban just by his looks. The women in the village fantasize Esteban describing how big he is by exaggerating a great deal. That is the use of magical realism, which Marquez uses in this story to show his size. “Not only was he the tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever seen, but even though they were looking at him there was no room for him in their imagination.” The women in the village compares Esteban to their husbands and fantasize and dream how better their husbands could be. After Esteban is released to the sea “without an anchor so that he could come back if he wished and whenever he wished,” his existence still stayed in the village and becomes part of the village’s tradition of making “wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors.” “Esteban’s memory could go everywhere,” if they kept him in the tradition.
Tradition is an important aspect of life and it is possible for tradition have an affect on one’s life. Nowadays, some traditions, which have been passed down for years is fading away because of the improvements in our lives. Also, the younger generation seems as though they do not have any passions as the older people do, examples seen in The Boat. As the tradition is fading away in our society, a part of ourselves will be erased too.
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