A Memory on Paper

            After reading "Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year" written by Raymond Carver, I had a couple of questions because some of the lines in the poem was not quite clear. When the narrator said, "yet how can I say thank you," (l. 14) it left me wondering what the narrator had wanted to say thank you for. To me it seemed that the narrator didn't know his father as much as a child growing up with his father would, as evidenced by this quote, "Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen," (l. 1). It seemed that he came to visit his father in a unfamiliar location, obviously a kitchen he never grew up in.
            Maybe the narrator wanted to say thank you for not passing down the father's traits to him (which in this poem, is the love for fishing [the yellow perch] and alcohol). As for myself, I can totally relate to the person looking at his father's picture and analyzing it with thoughts of thanks and the inability to relate to the father for his hobbies because I am the same way with the pictures that have been passed down in my family. How can you truly know someone if all you have is a photograph, much less have the same hobbies? Yet, it is possible to be able to read the inner thoughts of someone through the eyes as the narrator was able to, "But the eyes give him away," (l. 11) because I have been able to notice the emotions in people's eyes in photographs that I have seen whether it is from my family or photographs that belong to my friends.