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Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2017

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Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

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Character Analysis

Dave

Dave is the protagonist, though he is only referred to as “the dad” throughout the story, and the third-person limited narrator follows his point of view. His first name is only identified once—when his daughter’s physical therapist addresses him at Ivy’s ballet recital. He is likely a member of Generation X and is a serious man who is contemplative, politically aware, and invested in his family.

The story begins with Dave scrolling through Ivy’s Instagram, reflecting on how hard it is to talk to his daughter. In the pages that follow, Dave contemplates her every action, including her comments, silences, and Instagram posts. Although the reader has access to Dave’s observations and thoughts, the story never follows him to work. He is either at home, in his car, picking his daughter up from school, or waiting for her at physical therapy. There are only two outlier scenes: the one at the ballet recital and one in which he is at a restaurant with his wife. In both of those scenes, Ivy is the subject of the conversation. This is because Dave never stops ruminating over his daughter’s emotional distance from him.

Dave’s anxiety is at the center of the story. His frustration about understanding Ivy, his fumbling attempts to make conversation with her, and his inability to understand her Instagram posts form the plot and reflect the story’s themes. Still, he finds fulfillment in fatherhood, feeling joy when Ivy is happy and wanting to protect her when she’s sad.

Dave is estranged from other people in the story as well. He is anxious about his interactions with Ivy’s physical therapist and is confused about his daughter’s apparent ease with her—the way she easily makes conversation and seems relaxed in her presence. When the therapist calls him by name, he is surprised that she knows it. Dave is also awkward with his wife. He hugs her from behind so hard she topples over, stammers a defensive reason when she asks him about the new subscriptions he ordered, and gets so frustrated during the restaurant conversation about Ivy’s Instagram posts that he knocks his fork off the table. While he considers Ivy inscrutable and alien, his relationships with adults reveal that he struggles with self-confidence in communication in general.

Although Dave never quite reaches full understanding with his daughter, by the end of the story, they begin to cultivate understanding with each other. Dave achieves this by allowing Ivy to lead their interactions rather than him dictating how they should communicate or relate to each other. In the final scene, he engages in physical communication that he doesn’t quite understand but takes part in because he knows it’s meaningful to her. By contorting himself in that odd configuration against the window, Dave signals that he doesn’t have to be in control to engage with his daughter, positing him as a dynamic character.

Ivy

Ivy is on the cusp of turning 12 and in a period of adolescent angst. Some days she is talkative and friendly with her father, while other days she is quiet and distant. She has an active online life and uses Instagram to connect with her peers and forge her identity. The content of her posts reflects her status as a child on the cusp of adulthood—she still enjoys more childlike things like dripping ice cream cones, but also the occasional earlobe or “a pair of lips, shining wetly” (186). These latter images show a girl experimenting with more mature images, reflecting her budding sexuality as a near teen. She delights in large numbers of likes on her posts and is saddened when she feels rejected by her peers. She is sensitive, conscientious, creative, and optimistic—she likes to express herself through dance and making up songs, and she enjoys inspirational quotes. Like other adolescents, she has alternating periods of confidence and self-doubt, and the story hints that she is sometimes teased at school. At the same time, she has friends and good days. Ivy’s overall optimism can be seen in her dance practice—while she has joint problems, she attends physical therapy so she can continue dancing ballet rather than giving up.

Like others her age, Ivy simultaneously wants the approval of the adults around her while also rejecting their overtures. Although she likes her physical therapist, she does not always do her assigned exercises at home. Additionally, Ivy withdraws from her father when he is overeager to connect with her. Still, she tries to find ways to engage with him. When her father becomes depressed over the election results, she takes a sign with an inspirational quote from her room and puts it in his car. She also tries to convince him that her favorite influencer has integrity—she wants his approval for the things she cares about. At the end of the story, when she laughs as she engages her father through the window, Ivy shows a willingness to connect with her father and a more lighthearted nature than Dave sees elsewhere in the story. This optimistic ending reflects how even with the ups and downs of adolescence, familial love shines through.

Dorothy

Dorothy is Ivy’s mother and Dave’s wife. Appearing in only 9 of the 30 sections (in some of which she is only briefly mentioned), Dorothy is a secondary character. At the same time, she is one of the few named characters (unlike her husband), showing her important role in both his and Ivy’s lives. Where Dave is in the forefront, making clumsy attempts to connect with Ivy and then ruminating about her reactions, Dorothy is mainly in the background.

Dorothy first appears during the debate scene, where she is deeply engaged with the television, even giving advice to the moderator. Her concern with politics and the state of the world is clear here as she fidgets but does not speak with Dave or her daughter about what’s happening on the screen. Similar to Ivy, Dorothy gleans a lot of information through technology—alongside the debate, she seeks to understand her daughter better through her Instagram and Snapchat presences. She also seems to understand the repercussions of social media use more than Dave, becoming concerned when she realizes Snapchat messages are deleted immediately, and she’s not sure how Ivy uses the platform. While she is concerned with her daughter, she and Ivy do not speak directly to each other in the story. This could be due to the narrative being filtered through Dave’s perspective. For example, on the night of The Nutcracker performance, both Dave and the therapist interact with Dorothy directly; Dorothy’s apologies to the therapist about the boring nature of the program are paraphrased rather than quoted directly.

Unlike Dave, Dorothy is insightful about Ivy’s needs. During Ivy’s audition, Dorothy coaches Dave not to internalize or show expression on his face. While examining Ivy’s Instagram, she immediately notices Ivy’s consistent color palette —something that escapes Dave despite his obsession with his daughter’s page. While Dave only describes Ivy’s preferred colors as “pink,” Dorothy calls out specific hues—“light pink,” “hot pink,” “salmon” (196)—indicating an innate connection between her and her daughter.

The Physical Therapist

Appearing in five of the sections, Ivy’s physical therapist is the one adult with whom Ivy consistently talks, though she is not given a name. She is friendly and warm with Ivy, yet professional and distant with Dave. Because he can hear the rhythm of her lively conversation with Ivy behind the closed door as he sits in the waiting room, Dave is both suspicious and jealous of her. The physical therapist shows genuine concern for Ivy by gently asking about her consistency with her exercises at home and by showing up at The Nutcracker performance with a potted plant. She is also characterized as a civically responsible and caring person through her “I Voted” sticker. Although her primary role is caring for Ivy and helping her heal, her character also illustrates the difficulty that Dave has relating to anyone in a different generation.