what's the importance of forgiveness in "Smoke Signals"? How does Victor learn to forgive his father?
Adam Cole
Lauren Servais
English 100
15 April 2010
Forgiveness
I find myself having to answer this question. What is the importance of forgiveness? As we see in smoke signals, it is the ability to let the past go and be able to move on with our life in a constructive manner. It is the ability to open new doors in relationships that we once could not due to pain we had no way of releasing. It is the chance to relieve ourselves of the pain that has kept us from progressing. It is a new beginning. I personally am having a problem with forgiveness at this time. I am having this problem because it seems my life is ridiculed with others continually trying to make my life miserable. In my opinion, they do this because I have reached happiness and they are still struggling. I have opened my heart to these people many times and every time I do, they take advantage of my openness and try to bring me to their level. This has happened now for three years and I am getting tired of forgiving them. Because every time I do, their dagger gets thrust in my body deeper. But this essay is not about me. It is about victor and about his father. I will focus on that.
To forgive someone that has done something to you as a child becomes so much harder than what someone has done to you as an adult. As a child, you are so much more fragile and have not had the experiences of life as you would if you were an adult. You base your feelings primarily on emotion. It becomes hard to break these feelings or to change them. Victor has had a hard childhood because of what his father has done. His father has left the family because of these things he has done. But as victor understands it, it is he that has run his father off. He starts to build resentment up for his father’s leaving. He becomes harassed by the town that his father has left. It only builds more animosity towards the situation. How is a child that gets no guidance supposed to move on?
Years and years of this feeling is what makes him as a person. He has issues with dealing with his mother, friends, people in general due to the constant unknown of his father and where he had gone. He was a child without a person that even though he was not proud of, was very important to him. When he found out that his father had died, something that was history came back to the present and now he has a chance to put closure to it. Although he is not aware of this yet, he will soon find out just how wonderful and powerful forgiveness can be.
With the help of an aquantanince/friend victor embarks on a journey into feelings that are powerful enough to stir up all of the past experiences he had with his father and embraces them in a way he never felt. His friend brings things to victor’s attention along the way and then with the help of his father’s friend, he finds things out about his father he never knew. These experiences lead victor to a place where he can grieve his father’s actions and finally forgive him for the past. This simple thing “forgiveness” turns a hardened child into a man that is much different than he has ever been. Victor is finally comfortable in his own skin. All due to a simple thing called forgiveness.
