Critical Evaluation
Richard Ford’s Independence Day is the second novel in a trilogy—including The Sportswriter (1986) and The Lay of the Land (2006)—that describes the life of a real estate agent named Frank Bascombe. Independence Day received both the PEN/Faulkner Award and a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Ford has won the Rhea Award for short fiction, and his short stories are contained in many anthologies of contemporary literature.
Independence Day offers a view of the American Dream, but it is a mixed vision of American life. On the one hand, the novel offers a bucolic view of the United States, full of happy families enjoying a Fourth of July parade with a marching band playing a victory march. Bascombe dreams of connecting with his son by visiting shrines to America’s popular sports. He imagines having a heart-to-heart discussion about the books he has brought with him, in hopes of persuading his son, Paul, to read them. His books on, for example, the U.S. Constitution cannot compare with a stolen magazine and Paul’s deeper interest in the music he can escape to via ear plugs.
Bascombe has learned, as a real estate agent, that the search for a perfect house, the perfect home, is flawed. Part of his own personal philosophy of life is that people will get what they will get, and that just about everyone will end up settling for what they can afford. He shows Joe and Phyllis Markham what looks like the American Dream home, but the reality is that a prison is hidden behind its backyard trees. Even the prison becomes a sales pitch, as Bascombe claims it makes the house safer. The only escapees, if any, would be former politicians or former businessmen imprisoned for defrauding the public. Too much of the world has hidden worries. Bascombe had recently been mugged by some random teens who rode by him, hit him over the head with a bottle, and left the scene laughing. Worse yet, a female coworker had been murdered, and her killer never caught. Even Bascombe’s root beer and hotdog stand had been cased by criminals, though they had met their end when trying to rob a neighboring store.
Independence Day also explores Bascombe’s personal philosophy of life. He describes this time of his life as his “existence period,” where he tries to mentally ignore whatever aspects of life he dislikes, in the belief that these negatives will go away. He has found that, quite often, problems do indeed just go away. He contrasts himself to client Joe Markham, whom he thinks still believes that life has a purpose and meaning. Bascombe feels that Markham will come to stop believing that his, or anyone’s, life is going somewhere in particular.
Life, however, forces Bascombe to realize that he has to care. He senses his relationship with Sally is slipping away, worrying that she is still thinking about her former husband, a man who has literally disappeared from life, falling so far off the face of the earth that he was declared dead, after so many years. Even stronger yet, seeing his son injured has forced him to realize how strongly involved in life his heart really is, as he first worries about his son’s emotional problems and quirk, and then worries that Paul will be disfigured or will potentially lose his eyesight. Paul’s essentially self-inflicted injury will not go away, no matter how much Bascombe wishes it would.
Bascombe has felt that if he could simply ignore life, everything would turn out all right. However, he sees his former wife, Ann, worrying about their children; he...
(This entire section contains 777 words.)
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sees his girlfriend, Sally, wondering about their relationship; he sees Sally’s sense of doubt for future relationships because of the mysterious disappearance, the void of her first husband’s loss; he sees Paul suffer physical injury; and he sees so many troubled people around him. He realizes how much his stepbrother, Irv Ornstein, has helped him; not so much by doing anything dramatic, but by helping and staying with him, taking care of the little things. Bascombe realizes he needs to do more than ignore—he needs to act.
Those horrible moments waiting for information about his son at the hospital force Bascombe to reassess his personal philosophy. He recognizes that he is leaving his “existence period,” that he can no longer avoid life by superficially attending to it but must do so at a personal distance. He recognizes that he is about to enter what he labels “the Permanent Period,” one’s final stage of life, the time when people move toward the end, oblivion.