In later stages of the novel, David’s latent search for true manhood is undeniable. As a result, David was forced to interpret and form his own understandings of masculinity, and with no true guiding examples at his disposal, his ideologies became steeped in fictitious stereotypes of manhood. I did not want to be his buddy I wanted to be his son” (16). I think my father sometimes actually believed this. Though nameless, David’s father is the sole archetypal “man” in the entire novel, and therefore is the only model whom the young David has to form his own perceptions of what it truly means to be a “man.” In David’s childhood, David’s father was distant, and the times David interacted with him, any paternal instincts were veiled under a mask of fraternal companionship, not fatherhood: “We were not like father and son, my father sometimes proudly said, we were like buddies.
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