Brad Manning’s Inevitable Switch In “ARM Wrestling With My Father” Essay Sample

Instruction:

Brad Manning in his essay entitled, “Arm Wrestling with My Father,” noted while arm wrestling with his aging father that their “roles have begun to switch” (3). I argue that this phrase meant that his father was in the inevitable path of decline in physical force while brad was on the reverse path. Moreover, the phrase also meant a deep realization between their relationship as father and son.
The first, middle and the last parts of the essay give support to this argument. Accordingly, Manning began the story with his childhood days with his father. His father would challenge him to an arm wrestling session. He would always loose for his father was too strong. In the middle of the essay, Manning talks about his adulthood his teenage years, when he would again be arm wrestling with father and loose. At the end of the essay, Manning is talking about how he was able to defeat his father in an arm wrestling match – this was when Brad was already an adult.
It can be observed from this manner of telling the story that Brad was more focused on the chronology of the events from his childhood to his adulthood, with particular emphasis on the strength of his father. He is showing the readers how his father went from strong to a weaker physical state. He was actually talking about the effect of aging on his father’s physical strength. Aging is something inevitable. Hence, Brad was referring to this inevitable switch: when he way young his father was a lot stronger than him, but when he got older he became stronger than his father. Note also that he was also talking about the switch of roles. At the end of the essay he noted that how he wished his father still won their last arm wrestling match so that he would still be strong enough to carry and protect Brad juts as he did when he was still young. But now it would be different, Brad was imagining the day when he would have to care and protect his father (Manning 3).
He even imagined his father dead in a coffin, and brad would have to help carry that coffin to its final destination. Hence, Brad Manning was not just talking about the reversal in physical strength but also about the reversal of roles in the family. It is a reversal in the relationship between him and his father. There would come a time that he will act as the protector and the provider of care for his father juts like ho his father [provided care and protection to him when he was still young.
In conclusion, Brad Manning was telling his reader about the truth on the inevitability of role shift between the young and the adult. There would come a time when the young will play the role of the adult and vice versa. Manning utilized his experience arm wrestling with his father in other to tell his readers about this inevitable truth. Moreover, Manning was also telling the readers how he wanted that such shift would not happen, but he is powerless to reverse the shift or switch. It was an inevitable switch.