Serrantos- Analytical Response d: Character Comparison

Gautreaux’s characters are very unique. He uses many different ones to illustrate what each story is about. A common theme that connects almost all of his main characters is their age. He likes to use older characters, which provides an interesting contrast with the other younger characters. This theme is very prevalent in Welding With Children and Easy Pickings. Easy Pickings, likely one of his funnier stories, is a good place to start. Marvin, or as he likes to call himself, Big Blade, is a young man who thinks that all of the old people he steals from are “easy pickings”, hence the title of the story. He soon finds out that they are not as weak as he had thought, as they bring about his downfall. At the end though, he learns his lesson as he realizes that they are smarter than him. This can be compared with the grandfather from Welding With Children. Just how the older people changed the young man in Easy Pickings, the young children change the old man in Welding with Children.

Another theme that is prevalent in Gautreaux’s work is the theme of appearance versus reality. This is apparent in Misuse of Light and in Easy Pickings. In Misuse of Light, Mel finds out that the girl’s grandfather saved his camera instead of his wife in the sinking of the ship. He thinks that this is the truth and tells the girl, shattering the view of her grandfather. After further, more careful research he finds out that his story was wrong. He takes the first thing he hears as the truth and does not question it further just like Marvin. He thinks that the old people will not be hard to steal from but he ends up being very mistaken. He, like Mel, took the first thing he saw as the truth, and found out the hard way that he was wrong.