“Kansas” is the story of an old man reflecting back on a life changing event. As a boy, the old man was faced with a difficult decision. He didn’t know who to help and if he'd be hurt himself if he did interfere. In this story Stephen Dobyns suggests that if people don’t stop wickedness when they have the chance, they may regret it for the rest of their life. He shows us how smart young man with potential life changed because of one event.
The old man, at the time, was a college-aged boy. Very fearful and not knowing what to tell the upset farmer he asks “What about the police”. He was a smart young man, in that he chose his words with the farmer wisely. It says, “And the boy wanted to say he would forgive the wickedness, but he was afraid of that answer as well,” letting us know that he wasn’t just talking out of fear, but making sure what he told and asked the farmer was not going to upset him.
The story tells us that he is the only of his brothers to go off to college, that he attended university of Oklahoma , and that he is about to spend his summer in summer school at Lawrence to let us know he is intelligent and that he plans to play in Carnegie Hall someday may actually happen. It says, “He was hitchhiking back to summer school from Oklahoma” indicating his love and dedication for his education.
The old man's dreams indicate that that event stayed on his mind until the day he died and and filled him with regret. Also readers know that that one event impacted the old mans life enough for him to tell his kids about it, “He told his sons the story about the farmer in the pickup”. Not knowing if anyone was killed drove him crazy. He thought about how he didn’t interfere and what would have happened if he did. He regreted not doing anything to help even though he still didn’t know how it would have effected the whole situation. His dreams were a way for his mind to have a break and not think about what happened with the farmer, his wife, and the man driving the plymouth. Until the day he died he didn’t know what the best way was for him to help, but he wished he would have.
Guilt weighed the old man down his whole life. Dobyns never names the oldman so the reader can beter put themselves in his shoes. The readers can analyze the situation to know what they would have dont and how they would have felt. This story shows how guilt can make people regret something for the rest of their life even because of one crazy event.
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