Forgive and Forget

Life is not easy, anyone can tell you that. Everyone goes through struggles and has to deal with the obstacles that come their way. Personally, I think that forgiving someone after they have gotten on your bad side is one of the most complicated things to do. Although forgiving someone for hurting you can be extremely challenging, forgiving yourself can be that much more difficult. But why is it so hard? This is simply because no one wants to see their own flaws or personality blemishes. In Alice Munro’s Forgiveness in Families we see how difficult it really can be to change after noticing a personality flaw. The story commences with the narrator, Valerie, describing her brother Cameron. Not really describing personality traits or physical appearance or what he has accomplished in his years, Val describes what he has done to upset her. In this very biased description we learn more about Valerie and her self-centered quality. Val describes her brother as being an embarrassment because her mother was giving birth to him while Val was going to school for the first time. Val is bitter because all of the other kids had their moms with them. She is also sour because Cam “got to stay home from school weeks on end” because he had severe asthma. Val continues to give us more information on how awful her brother is. About mid-story, we see Val’s true colours if we hadn’t caught on yet. Val’s mom becomes very sick and in the end pulls through and lives. Although a very traumatic experience, it should also be one of complete relief however Val is still disturbed because “Cam didn’t kill her after all, with all his carelessness and craziness and going out and neglecting her he didn’t kill her.” With this statement said, it becomes evident how self-centered Val really is. Writers usually put a moment of self-recognition or realization at the very end of a story, Forgiveness in Families lacks this moment of truth. We know this because Val says, “I was thinking myself about changing into a different sort of person from the one I am....but afterwards I went back to being more or less the same.” This shows really how difficult it is to forgive yourself and to make the change needed to correct it. This just goes to show how complex and challenging life can be.