Disillusionment
The Ask focuses on the theme of disillusionment as Milo Burke is challenged to come to terms with a set of failed dreams, disappointments and betrayals. Along with Milo, Don Charboneau is a figure of disappointment, bitterness and disillusionment, losing his legs while serving in Iraq and losing his mother as the result of a car accident.
Milo Burke aspired to be a great painter. Ironically, Milo says, “he once believed he was painting’s savior, back in a decade that truly needed one.” The dream was never meant to be. Later recalling the advice of an art professor, Milo remembers being told that he had some talent, enough to make a career out of painting but only if he also had the pettiness and the strength to endure a life of scrambling for university jobs. These are traits he never develops.
In his adult life, he performs poorly at a job that he finds meaningless and occasionally paints on the weekends, sitting in front of a canvas and applying splotches of paint until “the old agony overwhelms” him and he weeps. This is the agony of a failed dream in the midst of a life defined by mediocrity. Admitting this does not allow Milo Burke to let go of his old dream but instead leads him to bitterly reflect on the state of his professional life.
When Milo discovers his wife’s affair with another man, he is again cast out. A failure as an artist (he never truly tried to take his professor’s advice) and a failure in marriage, Milo is also emotionally cast out by his mother. His father is dead.
The life he envisioned for himself is a far cry from the life he is living. Bitterness is Milo’s most prominent trait, one which he recognizes and, for the most part, chooses not to combat.
Purdy’s son, Don Charboneau, is also overwrought with bitterness, fixated on the things he does not and cannot have. He is bitter about the loss of his legs. He is bitter about the loss of his mother and he is bitter about never having known his father.
In a moment of near sincerity, Don Charboneau recognizes his anger and suggests that he is going to try to forgive and learn to let his anger go. He says this just before he plants an improvised explosive device on the car of another Iraq veteran; he then disappears.
Coming to terms and coping with loss proves difficult for Milo and impossible for Don, because both deal with the same disillusionment and the same belief that life for them should have been different.
Parenthood and Parenting
The most significant and fully explored relationships in The Ask concern parents and children. Milo Burke’s relationship to his son constitutes much of the narrative as Milo takes four-year-old Bernie to and from school, teaches him new words, reads him bedtime stories and worries about his own inadequacies as a parent.
In a passage describing the decision by Milo and his wife Maura to send Bernie to an inexpensive preschool and to cut-rate day care, Milo suggests that he and his wife
knew the price of Christine’s criminally low price, namely under her supervision, or lack thereof, Bernie was becoming a criminal. Child care was like everything else. You got what you paid for, and your child paid for what you could not pay for.
Milo’s own childhood is discussed often as he reflects on his father. Milo’s father thought, as many people do, that Milo is homosexual. This emasculation from his father extends through much of Milo’s...
(This entire section contains 454 words.)
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social and professional life, though the greatest damage inflicted by his father on Milo seems to have come from his absence. Nicknamed “Jolly Roger”, Milo’s father was not present for much of Milo’s childhood, choosing to live a wild life, full of one-night-stands and drugs.
The inevitable resentment from Milo’s mother meant that when Milo’s father lay on his deathbed in the hospital, treatment was cut short and the plug was quickly pulled. After the death of her husband, Milo’s mother quickly moves on, taking on a female partner. She turns away from Milo. Although Milo wonders why his mother chooses to be an absent grandparent to Bernie and resents his mother’s emotional distance, he cannot blame her for reclaiming her life after what she went through with his father.
Another significant parent-child relationship appears in the relationship between Purdy and his son Don Charboneau. Charboneau meets Purdy only once as the result of subterfuge and in this meeting attempts to publicly humiliate and shame his father.
Serving in the armed forces in Iraq when his mother dies, Don Charboneau blames Purdy for her death. Purdy’s money had been paying the bills at a private hospital while Don’s mother was in a coma. She dies in transit to a state hospital which Don believes to be an indication that Purdy chose to stop paying the medical bills. Don makes many demands on Purdy, financial and obscurely emotional, and fixates on two ideas. The first idea is extracting money for his loss from Purdy (the loss of his mother and also his legs). The second idea driving Don Charboneau is a rather innocent desire to forge an actual relationship with his father.
Food
Food is a motif raised to the importance of a theme in The Ask as every major character is tied to the consumption of a particular type of food. Milo repeatedly associates himself with a turkey wrap. This bland and unadventurous lunch food is Milo’s safe choice, though he is tempted to create a salad from the deli’s salad bar near his work. However, he never does. He always chooses the turkey wrap.
Bernie and Maura are each also associated with food. Bernie flings mango at the walls and enjoys eating his “not-dogs” while Maura is connected to fresh lunch salad.
Milo’s boss Vargina becomes associated with a delicious egg salad and, in a farewell gift to Milo, offers him the recipe. Purdy, his sidekick, and Don Chardoneau all become connected to food as well. The food comments on the characters' social statuses and political values and the act of eating is often important in defining relationships in the novel. Importantly, Milo never eats with his mother or father in the story.
