The Member of the Wedding #10

"The three of them blinked at each other in the light as though they were three strangers or three ghosts. Then the front door opened and F. Jasmine hear her father trudging slowly down the hall. Already the moths were at the window, flattening their wings against the screen, and the final kitchen afternoon was over at last" (McCullers, 123).

Frankie's almost nonexistent relationship with her father in "The Member of the Wedding" serves to emphasize her dependence on Berenice and even John Henry. Although Frankie does not seem to resent her father or even have a terrible relationship with him, the lack of compassion instills curiosity in the reader's mind. This deprivation of a father figure perhaps served as the impetus for Frankie's desire to escape her hometown to live with Jarvis and Janice. There is almost no character exposition of Frankie's father, and his lack of presence heightens the universality of the books theme. Frankie's lack of a strong relationship with her father can be easily applied to a great number of readers struggling with undeveloped relationships or neglect. Furthermore, attributing Frankie's adolescent "mid-life crisis-esque" panic to her lack of a compassionate paternal figure is a reasonable insinuation that may serve for the reader as a needed justification for her otherwise unmotivated pseudo-mania.