Just like in Chelsea's blog I noticed, especially on the second reading of "He," that the idea of keeping up appearances is a huge factor in the stories. I counted and found that the idea of or actually saying “I won’t let the neighbors say…” came up seventeen times in “He” and the story is only nine pages long. Mrs. Whipple was the main source of those worries, and we have all agreed that what she did was wrong. But I think that Mr. Whipple has been skipped over and I think that he did his son the worst wrong.
We talked about it in class how Mrs. Whipple basically gives Mr. Whipple permission to not really care for and love their son, “’It’s natural for a mother,’ Mrs. Whipple would remind him. ‘You know yourself it’s more natural for a mother to be that way. People don’t expect so much of fathers, some way’” (49). And with this statement, Mr. Whipple doesn’t even try to love their son. In fact he doesn’t even care about Him at all. It’s only Mrs. Whipple that ever cares what the neighbors will say, and as bad as it is to only care what the neighbors think, Mr. Whipple doesn’t care about their son at all.
Mr. Whipple never shows any concern for really anyone in the family, his only concern is that they are down on their luck and will never be able to get back up. Whenever anything goes wrong, he always has some comment to the effect of “Great, just one more thing to make life miserable.” When He gets sick and needs to see the doctor all Mr. Whipple can think is, “All the way there and back he worried about where the money was to come from: it sure did look like he had about all the troubles he could carry” (57). Mrs. Whipple at least tries to think about the needs of her son, but Mr. Whipple only cares about how miserable his life is.
Tags: appearances, He, Rachel Simmons, response