Themes of the 4 Short Stories

Throughout all of these short stories, the recurring theme seemed to be the relationships between parents and their children. Each and every one of them seemed to have a dysfunctional aspect to them. In the first story, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," the mother ships the daughter off to get married to a man she hardly even knew. In "Rules of the Game," the mother does not think that the daughter should play chess and show her weaknesses, but once she succeeds, her mother parades her all over the town showing her off to everyone. The third story, "The Book of the Dead," included a mother and father who hid the dark secrets of her father's past from their daughter, Annie. A rebellious son with parents who made a wrong decision to send him to a worthless tutor was featured in "Teenage Wasteland." In all of these stories, it seems to be the parents who have made bigger mistakes than the children have. Although there may be cultural differences, like in "Rules of the Game," there is still no reason to go parading your daughter around the town, bragging that she won another chess tournament. That is just embarrassing. The only story where I see that the parents are not clearly at fault is the last one because if Donny would have tried a little harder in school, none of the problems they had would have begun in the first place.