In "Son," the conflict between the children and parents is generational in nature. Every succeeding paragraph of the short story takes the reader farther and farther back in time, detailing the history of the previous generation. The sons feel as if their fathers do not understand them. The son of 1973 thinks of himself as an interloper in his home. "Time has tricked him and made him a son" (Updike 1070). "Daughter of Invention" by Julia Alvarez depicts the conflict between a mother and daughter and the mother and the rest of the family. Alvarez's mother wants a source of esteem outside her maternal role and concocts inventions as a way of asserting her intelligence and value. Alvarez is desperate to fit into America and is embarrassed by her mother even though some of her mother's ideas, like wheeled suitcases, are not really foolish. Both stories suggest that understanding is only achieved by seeing the world from the other person's perspective. Updike stresses that all fathers once were sons, and the young Alvarez's desire for respect and defying notions of femininity are paralleled in her mother's desire for recognition through her inventions.

Question 4

In "Son," the greatest gift the young man of the 1970s receives from his family is acknowledgement that he has a right to achieve independence, even though the boy may sometimes act very sullen when other family members try to give him love. The boy accepts the wisdom and tenderness (like a backrub) of adults very grudgingly; the adults recognize that he needs these gestures, even though the boy does not. In "Daughter of Invention," Julia Alvarez, struggling to find her identity as a woman in a patriarchal culture, is supported by her mother when the girl wishes to make a speech quoting Walt Whitman to her classmates. Although her father destroys the speech, her mother defends Alvarez, asserting her daughter's right to speak her mind. Alvarez says that she sees herself as her mother's greatest 'invention' and because of her mother's spirited defense of her daughter, her father capitulates and buys his daughter the typewriter she always dreamed of owning. Both children come to realize that although they may be misunderstood by the older generation, they still need its support to realize their dreams and that the older generation had similar aspirations when it was growing up.