Walker Brothers Cowboy

by Alice Munro

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Student Question

What do the specified paragraphs in "Walker Brothers Cowboy" reveal about the narrator's relationships with her parents and her feelings about those relationships?

Quick answer:

In two paragraphs from “Walker Brothers Cowboy” which begin “In the afternoons she often walks,” the narrator reveals the strained but respectful relationship she has wither mother. Her vision of their past and present lives differs from her mother’s attitude toward the changes they have undergone. The narrator tries to resist her mother’s pressure to feel nostalgic. Although these paragraphs do not mention her father, they emphasize that the girl spends more time with her mother.

Expert Answers

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The narrator of Alice Munro’s story “Walker Brothers Cowboy” is a girl describing the changes that her family experienced during the Depression. The beginning of the story establishes the family’s poverty and the adjustments that the narrator, her parents, and her younger brother must make when they move from a farm to a town.

In two paragraphs which begin “In the afternoons she often walks to Simon’s Grocery” and end “any unwanted emotion,” the narrator tells about time she spends in her mother’s company when they go out shopping and return home. The narrator’s father is not mentioned in these paragraphs but it was established earlier that he is a traveling salesman, so the narrator usually spends relatively little time with him.

These paragraphs reveal the strain that the narrator feels in her relationship with her mother, who either is not aware of her daughter’s feelings or tries to downplay or ignore them. The girl is dutiful and responsible but also resentful of conforming to her parents’ expectations. While she politely accompanies her mother in doing errands, she dislikes wearing the ladylike clothes her mother sews for her and even the sound of her mother’s voice.

When they return home with ice cream, the girl tries to make this treat last a long time. It bothers her that her mother seems to live in the past, asking her to remember things from when they lived on the farm—including the time before her brother was born, and when they still had a dog. The daughter often pretends not to remember the things the mother brings up so she will not be asked to join in her mother’s emotional response. While her mother clings to the past, the girl wants to leave it behind.

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