Killings by Andre Dubus, is a story that tugs at many of my emotions. It is about a father who has lost his youngest son, Frank. Frank’s life was taken because the women he was seeing had a jealous ex-husband (or soon to be) who was full of rage. The father thought it would be best to take revenge and kill the man (Richard Stout) who had shortened his son’s life. The main idea I got from this story is that you never know what you will do when faced with certain issues.
There is foreshadowing in the first paragraph as well as in the title that gives you an idea of what happened to frank and what is to come for the man responsible “I should kill him” (pg. 103) and Killings being plural. The way the father does not just go up to Richard and kill him, but rather leads Richard on the think that he is just getting him out of town, makes me feel that the father had conflict of his own in regards to what decision to make. The author uses such descriptive language that you can almost put yourself at the scene of Richard being killed. This story is not just about the murder of a young man and the revenge of a father, but could also be considered a love story in the sense that the father had such a love for his son that he needed to bring justice himself.
This story reminds me of the recent tragedy that struck the family of a past classmate, whose life was taken by the father of her children, a very similar situation to the one in Killings. I felt overwhelming sympathy for the families of the ones that were killed, but slowly I began to feel sympathy for the man who had done it also. Not only do his children know what he did to their mother, but he also has to live with knowing what he did for the rest of his life! I believe that would be far worse punishment than taking his life also.
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