The Gerontologist, Vol 30, Issue 4 486-490, Copyright © 1990 by The Gerontological Society of America
Two approaches to the care of an elder parent: a study of Robert Anderson's I Never Sang for My Father and Sawako Ariyoshi's Kokotsu no hito [The Twilight Years]
HS Donow
Department of English, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale 62901.
Care of an elder patient is often regarded by the children as an unwanted
burden. Anderson's 1968 play, I Never Sang for My Father, and Ariyoshi's
1972 novel, Kokotsu no hito [The Twilight years], show how two different
families of two different cultures (American and Japanese) respond to this
crisis. Both texts arrive at dramatically different conclusions: in one the
children, Gene and Alice, prove unwilling or unable to cope with the
problems posed by their father's need; in the other Akiko, though nearly
overwhelmed by the burden of her father-in-law's illness, emerges richer
for the experience.
