"Ashes" Reading Response

Ashes Reading Response Final

Gus Miller, Class 802

The short story Ashes, by Susan Beth Pfeffer, speaks to me about trust and human motivations. It follows a day or so in the life of Ashleigh, a teenage girl whose parents are divorced. Her mom is practical and efficient, while her dad is thoughtful, carefree, and a “dreamer.” Her dad, although he seems to be nice, loving, and wanting to bring out the best in Ashes, as he calls Ashleigh, is gradually revealed to be manipulative and have his own motives, which he uses Ashes for by making her feel special. Her parents dislike each other, and have had many arguments, her mom thinking of the dad as an “irresponsible bum.” The story follows her as she spends an afternoon and evening with her dad, who slowly persuades Ashes to “borrow” the two hundred dollars in cash her mother keeps in a teapot in the living room of her house. At the end, she is forced to in essence decide for herself between which parent she wants to disappoint less. The motives and actions of the father are shown to greatly affect his family, destroying their relationships and affecting greatly his wife and daughter.. This shows how such actions and desires can affect others, and the way love, wants, and needs influence teenagers.

Ashes herself seems to be an average teenager. She expresses admiration and love for her father, and the author uses the weather and environment as metaphors for how he makes her feel. She seems to like the way her dad is more than the way her mom is, since her mom’s practicality limits Ashes and makes her feel ordinary and restricted. Although her father makes her feel wonderful and special, he wants to use her for his own ulterior motives, and her mother is clearly the person she needs in order to develop as a person.The father repeatedly says that Ashes is “one in a million”, which she acknowledges is false, but still makes her feel amazing. This line is utilized throughout the story to show the way the father feels about Ashes. There’s no doubt that he loves her. At one point, before Ashes enters her mom’s house to take the money in the teapot, the father says, “You’re one in a million,” and the “best daughter a man could dream of.” However, his activities and priorities are shown to be questionable at best, certainly not suitable for raising a teenager. Ashes is put in an excruciating situation where she faces the disappointment and sadness of one of her parents because of the father, and she has to rely on herself to distinguish between wants and needs, between which parent will affect her positively.

Ashes’ mother is shown to be a pragmatic character whose practicality harshly contrasts with her former husbands’ drifting, carefree attitude towards life.  Ashes finds herself held back by the nature of her mom, as shown in an instance of the story where her mom says that she can’t promise Ashes five dollars with which to go see a movie. The mom keeps supplies like money, food, water, flashlight batteries, and similar pieces of survival equipment with her in case of an emergency. These behaviors are polar opposites of Ashleighs’ father, and Ashes is not very fond of them. She wants the love and admiration of her father, but that comes with irresponsibility that can’t be introduced into a teenagers’ life without consequences reflected on the teens’ character. The father promised Ashes a necklace of stars when she was very young, however, according to ashes, “child support checks don’t always show up on time, and I never did get that necklace of stars.” These behaviors, when added up, show that the fathers’ actions weren’t always in the best interest of his family.However, her mother makes her feel safe, and the way she acts restricts Ashes’ freedom, but also protects her and nourishes her, allowing her to grow into a responsible person.

Ashes’ dad is the character that is used to define Ashes in this story; throughout it, Ashes makes connections and has flashbacks about the way her parents, but her father in particular, have shaped her life. The father seems to be a nice, joyful character, and throughout the story showers  Ashes with love and compliments. However, his true motives start seeping through once he takes Ashes to a diner. One of the most puzzling and most difficult things to figure out in the story is what her dad is really like on the inside. Even though he manipulates her, the way he treats her would suggest that he does love her and care greatly about her. At one point, after telling Ashes she should be a supermodel, a photographer, and a clothing designer, the Ashleigh thinks to herself that “Last week he’d told me to be an astronaut. The week before that, the CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation. And the week before that, he’d been stunned by my spirituality.” These lines are an example of her father showing affection and pride, but it also rather blatantly shows that he’s trying too hard to make her feel good, and that there’s something else behind that façade. The most we can get from the content of the story is that the father loves Ashes, but still wants to use her for his own motives. However, his actions have had great effects on Ashes’ life, and have put her in a very difficult situation. This evidence would heavily indicate that her fathers’ life is in shambles, and he’s torn between his own needs and motives and the state of his fragmented family.

In conclusion,  Ashes is a very deep piece that speaks about love, motivation, and the consequences actions can have on peoples’ lives and emotions. The complicated situation, although it might seem far-out to some, is perfectly plausible, and it shows the ways people can affect each other, especially in intimate relationships such as marriage and parent to child. It effectively illustrates the way some people can be a mixture of love and kindness and  subtle manipulation, and how trust isn’t always something to be vested in someone just because of the intimate relationships mentioned above. It shows the ways developing people have mixed requirements and how different people can affect them, and how what’s good for them isn’t the same as what they need as developing human beings. Ashes is a deep story about the foundations of human emotion and how it truly works at the core.