Analytical essay on selected topics

Ham on Rye is a novel and is written in an autobiographical fashion by Charles Bukowski. The main character is a person named Henry Chinaski. Chinaski in this novel tells the story of his childhood and difficulties of going through adolescence to adulthood. The novel has a lot of profanity and vulgar language in it but still is very well-written. The story in the novel speaks to most male students in high schools. One of the interesting things about Ham on Rye is that reading a piece in each chapter can tell about the whole book. There are many small stories by Chinaski that speaks about the rest of the book, but the most interesting part is his relationship with his father. Chinaski's relationship with his father was difficult and painful but very important to the formation of his own character. Therefore it may be argued that Chinaski's relationship with his father greatly influenced his relationship with the rest of the society.

Chinaski had a bad relationship with his father because his father was ruthless and nasty. The father punished him savagely for minor errors or if he was just in a mad mood. For example, his father told him to mow the lawn every Saturday and told him not to leave any hairs. But no matter how hard Chinaski mowed the lawn, his father would always found some hairs left and punish his son. The father used razor strop to beat him. To make things worse, his mother never tried to stop her abusive husband. One day, Chinaski had had enough. When his father told him to lick vomit, he not only refused to obey but he punched his father in the face. Again to make matters worse, Chinaski's mother defended her abusive husband although she also was a victim of his.

This particular experience influenced Chinaski greatly. Here is how he explains the restrictions on his life put there by his father and how the father-son relationship influenced him. Responding to his teacher's assignment that he should go and see President Herbert Hoover on Saturday and write an essay about the meeting, Chinaski wrote: "Saturday? There was no way I could go. I had to mow the lawn. I had to get the hairs. (I could never get all the hairs.) Almost every Saturday I got a beating with the razor strop because my father found a hair. (I also got stropped during the week, once or twice, for other things I failed to do or didn't do right.) There was no way I could tell my father that I had to go and see President Hoover" (p. 82). Chinaski did not go to see the President but he still wrote the essay. He made it up.