How to Become a Writer

Francie’s mother is a practical woman described as someone who “believes in wearing brown because it hides spots” (1). She is uninterested in her daughter’s writing, and instead, asks her to do chores around the house. It is implied that she and her husband divorce because he is having an affair. She is distracted by her son’s tour in Vietnam, unable to give Francie the attention she wants for her writing. Because of her practicality, though, it is likely she never would have, even without these concerns. About her parents’ marriage and divorce, Francie writes a story in which a married couple accidentally blows themselves up by detonating a land mine in their kitchen.

When Francie’s mother visits later in the story, she still has not given up hope that her daughter will make another career choice. About her writing friends, the narrator says that Francie’s mother would have described them as “a bad crowd.” She notices the circles under Francie’s eyes and gives her a book playfully titled How to Become a Business Executive, in a nod to the story’s title. When Francie responds by telling her mother she wants to be a writer, her mother reminds her that she had once been a child psychology major. This is a theme continued through the story—all the professions Francie might have had if she had not been a writer. At the end of this conversation, the mother seems resolved to the reality of her daughter being a writer, if not happy about it, while keeping hope alive Francie will change her mind. She comments, “Sure you like to write. Of course. Sure you like to write” (31) as if merely humoring her daughter, hoping she will have a change of heart. The mother figure is a voice of pragmatism and criticism and her lack of understanding and support for Francie’s writing highlights Francie’s isolation even inside her own family.

The brother character never appears in an actual scene in the story and never speaks. However, as a topic that Francie struggles to write about, his presence is important. Little is revealed about him other than he is fighting in the Vietnam War at the beginning of the story. In the middle of the story, while Francie is in college, we find out that her brother has come home with only “half a thigh.” His returned, damaged presence haunts the story. When given an assignment in which she must write about her brother’s return from war, she cannot write about it. For the first time, it seems, she has no words.

Later, when contemplating why she writes, Francie cannot help but think: “Why is there war? Or: If there is a God, why is my brother now a cripple?” (14). This discomfort with the unexplained hurtful realities of the world seem to be inherently connected to why it is she writes. Maybe she writes to understand these events, or to ask more questions about them. There is never closure, yet Francie never seems to stop asking questions. In this way, the brother character stands in as a metaphor for the injustices in the world and the bad things that happen to good people.

It is interesting, too, that though Francie cannot write directly about her brother, her writing is filled with the kinds of violence that he must have seen while serving in Vietnam. Multiple explosions occur in her stories, and it is implied that her brother lost his leg in a land mine explosion. His suffering and her attempts to understand it are revealed in her fiction but are cloaked in the outrageous plots of her other characters.