Analysing Benjamin Percy’s "refresh, Refresh"

The Idolization of My Father

In Benjamin PercyЎ¦s Ў§Refresh, RefreshЎЁ the boys develop into men while trying to become like their fathers. They also want their fathers to be proud of them. FreudЎ¦s psychoanalytical approach would suggest that the boys are trying to step into the shoes of their fathers. His Oedipus Complex states that the son must metaphorically kill his father, except the fathers in the story really do die, so the sons step into their fathersЎ¦ shoes by signing up for the war. In this essay I will show how the boys become men while training themselves to be like their fathers, and using a psychoanalytical approach I will show how the sons step into their fathersЎ¦ shoes and how the thwarted Oedipus Complex has affected the boyЎ¦s development.

The boysЎ¦ gold-colored boxing gloves are a significant symbol of them training to become their fathers. Ў§We were trying to make each other tougher.ЎЁ They fought everyday after school indeed making themselves tougher, but for a greater purpose then to just get their revenge on the school bully, Seth Johnson. Ў§If you cried, you lost. If you got knocked out or if you yelled stop, you lost.ЎЁ Even though the boys never said the real reason for their boxing matches, one could easily guess, after reading a little more into the story, that the reason was to gain the strength of their fathers, the strength of soldiers. Ў§And if he went down, he would go down swinging as he was sure his father would.ЎЁ They also just wanted their fathers to be proud of them and pleased by their actions: Ў§This is what we all wanted: to please our fathers, to make them proud, even though they had left us.ЎЁ

The aging of the boxing gloves shows how hard they trained with one another and also the length of time that their fathers were at war. Ў§We struck each other with such force and frequency that the golden gloves crumbled and our knuckles showed through the sweat-soaked, blood-soaked foam like teeth through a busted lip.ЎЁ When they buy another pair, it shows their commitment to the training, but also how they can easily get over the fact that their fathers have been away at war for so long. Also when they fought they painted their faces with the camo grease that their fathers had left behind. This shows that they wanted to feel the way their fathers felt at war, with painted faces for camouflage as they fought almost how their fathers were fighting the Iraqis.

Another piece of significance is when Josh states that he could just hop on his bike and ride away from it all. Ў§On this bike I could ride and ride and ride, away from here, up and over the Cascade, through the Willamette Valley, until I reached the ocean, where the broad black backs of whales regularly broke the surface of the water, and ever farther.ЎЁ This shows how he could easily just run away from everything that is happening. HeЎ¦s stating that he doesnЎ¦t have to become a man yet and could just have fun and live free. He doesnЎ¦t do this though; he just wants us to know that he can. This shows that he is ready to become a man just like his father.

Ў§He drank too much beer and smoked too many cigarettes and spent too much time with his buddies, fishing, hunting, bullshitting.ЎЁ Over the course of the story the boys imitate these actions of their fathers. After every boxing match they would smoke cigarettes. In November they went hunting, and smoked cigarettes, drank beers and bullshitted just like their fathers did. Gordon even acted like a soldier in the woods and wore his fatherЎ¦s overlarge cammies: Ў§Gordon said, Ў§LetЎ¦s go, troops,ЎЁ holding his rifle before his chest diagonally, as a soldier would. He dressed as a soldier would too, wearing his fatherЎ¦s overlarge cammies rather than the mandatory blaze-orange gear.ЎЁ Later on in the night Josh shot a deer and him and Gordon stood around it and smoked cigarettes. They then skinned the deer making chops, roasts, steaks and bundle the meat up, something that their fathers definitely taught them, and they now did on their own. Other boys, like Seth Johnson, also hunted, drank beers and bullshitted like their fathers. Seth sat around a fire with his friends drank beers and Ў§joked about Jessica RobertsonЎ¦s big ass titties and passed around a bottle of whiskey and drank to excess.ЎЁ

Gordon and Josh took their bullshitting even farther by taking the deer skin and scaring Seth and his friends. They also slashed SethЎ¦s tires and stole all of the rifles in his car. This showed that Gordon and Josh were still boys and not yet men. It wasnЎ¦t until they saw Dave Lightener on SethЎ¦s porch to tell Seth and his mother that his father had died that Gordon and Josh truly started to become men. They felt sorry for Seth, so they gave him back the rifles they had stolen, bought