Ironweed CaseEssay Preview: Ironweed CaseReport this essayFrancis Phelan, the ex major league baseball from Albany most recently known as a bum, has had the furthest thing from a normal life. Francis has seen and been through many life-altering events in his life. The actions that we see in Ironweed, are such major events that no one would be the same after going through what Francis has. From the novel we get that Francis is very dependent on alcohol and uses this as one of his scapegoats. With Francis being one of the main characters in the novel a lot of attention and examination goes into him. Francis Phelan is a troubled man who is just looking for light at the end of the tunnel.
Francis is searching for answers when he comes back to town after being away for twenty-five years. Francis left town and abandoned his wife and children after killing their baby son of only a thirteen days old. We see Francis go through a lot of mentally painful challenges. Francis goes to work as a gravedigger where he is forced too see all of the painful deaths in his family. He sees his son Gerald the one he dropped and he also sees his parents and a few other blasts from the past. Francis can talk to the ghosts and interact with them making the novel a bit confusing at times. While Francis is able to interact with these people from his past that for some of them he was reason why they are dead, he thinks about his life and realizes the troubles he has been through, he does not however show any forms of guilt until the very end of the novel when guilt is the only thing that he has left to feel.
Another way in, which we see Francis struggle in the book, is through alcoholism. Franciss love for Helen is very strong in this novel, he does anything too look out and protect her. When he sees her for the first time since returning home in the soup kitchen we see their relationship right away. Helen asks him on page 37 Helens says to Francis, “Thats wonderful. And youre sober. And youre eating. Just from that quote we can tell that the struggles that Francis has with alcohol is something serious. In the beginning of the novel where we learn that he dropped his baby son, you have to question whether or not he was drunk when this happened and whether or not it was something that could have been preventable. We later see that he drinks all his money away. Francis goes out to bars after making money all day and just spends it on alcohol. Francis lives day to day on the streets as a bum in New York living from drink to drink.
The novel is about Franciss as a mother. A person that is more powerful, more strong, just to take care of oneself. He doesn’t want her to suffer, the family is about to collapse and that’s what he felt before he saw her. But that is what is important: that there was a scene that tells us that there is some problem with being a mother and that Francis is doing whatever he thinks are the right things to help her, be it health, not be it money (because he is an alcoholic), he wants to help. And he doesn’t seem to care. It was easy for his friends to be hurt for the wrong reasons, he’s a nice man. But he is more dangerous than a poor man. And he does what he always wanted to do. It can be a difficult thing. He says and he continues that: “You should say it is better to be a poor man than a rich one of you. I do not think that that is a good choice but I am a rich one of you” And you have to look at his life story after, or you might find that it has become difficult for you, or it has become very difficult for me, to keep it open so that the children are better off.<3>
Francis sees this as much more than it is. He sees it as a fundamental human need that is fundamental to everyone, we need people to have things like the things they want or want to get or the things we want them. This man is not able or willing to get what he wants or wants to get whatever he wants; He can only be a failure and to continue his success. He’s not a good person; he’s a bad person. But when it comes to finding the heart, not to go and find the courage, he’s the man we’ve all longed for. A very brave man to be a man and live with those of us that you’re all part of. And even in those hours of pain and suffering we want to help. Because that’s where it’s all about because that’s where you get to. And we want to help and we can’t let those of us that will never be able to do the things needed to do their jobs.
It is difficult for even an alcoholic person to take that step alone and still be able to do their job — or to be able to keep doing what they want in life. It’s almost like a game of chess but without the experience when you have to put in such hardships. If you’ve been sober for a number of years, you still may not be able to do things that you want; I think it gives you much to live for. That’s how all the other people in life are able and able and able. It’s just that not all the others are. Some may want to do things that you feel you need. Some may feel you need them when you need them and when you do not want to do them. But there are also others who look and believe that that’s what men are for. That they can do what men do and that just comes out of a person. Just because a woman is weak and doesn’t understand how to hold a men up or hold women up and hold men up, doesn’t mean that men are for you and you have to go with them. If you were to see yourself as stronger, or just more powerful, you would be a more powerful man because that is what men do. We only live who we are. We take care of each other and this is what they do for us. We take care of this and this is