Miranda 1/10/03

Ms. Gokturk Comp 4

"I know that somehow I'll always be his little girl," states Debra Adams in her essay entitled "No More Lollipops." In this essay, Adams explains the relationship she developed with her father as a little girl. She uses elements in her essay such as the point of view and the mood to prove her point further. In the novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers, McCullers uses similar devices to show the relationship between the main character, Mick, and her father. The character Mick and Debra both have different, but equally important relationships with their fathers. Their relationships with their fathers are typical of other relationships with girls and their fathers.

In the essay, "No More Lollipops," Adams explains what her relationship with her father was like as a little girl. The essay focuses on one example of how her father and her communicated through fun and jokes. The story is told through her point of view specifically to allow the reader to understand how she felt. "It seemed like nothing pleased me more than that ride on my fathers shoulders, night after night." All too quickly it seems, Debra looses this special relationship with her father because she grows up. "It seems I just woke up one morning and I was no longer my daddy's little girl." The special relationship with Debra and her father would no longer be based on fun and jokes. All fathers and daughters have a relationship similar to Debra's when they are little. Young children in general find their parents love for them through fun and games. However, like Debra's, the relationship evolves into something else, as the children grow older. Mick's relationship with her father is an example of a average relationship between an older daughter and her father.

In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, we see a more mature relationship between a father and a daughter that is based on communication. Many nights, when Mick is on her way out of the house, her father will call her. Mick didn't always want to talk to her father. Many times she was in a hurry and anxious to get out, but she went anyway. There was something in their relationship that would not let her walk away from him. Something that she did not have with anyone else. Her father never had any particular reason for calling her, but as Mick explains, "He only wanted real bad to talk to her."(84). They talked of things such as money, accounts, and various other adult-like topics. Just like in the relationship between Mick and her father, many older girls have a close relationship with their fathers. It takes communication like this to maintain a close relationship between a father and daughter. The child is not a child anymore, and requires more than just play to obtain a connection.

There are many differences between these two relationships. In this essay, Debra's is a younger child, while in the novel, Mick is older. Debra has a relationship like that of many other young girls with their fathers, one that is based on play, fun, and jokes. Debra also talks about loosing this particular aspect of the relationship as she gets older. By the time Debra is 15, she has a relationship with her father more like that of Mick and hers. In the entire novel, there is no trace of a relationship that Debra talks about having. Mick's relationship is based upon communication. She does not play games with her father, but rather sits up well into the night talking to him. Their conversation themselves are rather advanced. They talk about subjects like money, and problems in real life. Mick can't be satisfied with games alone at her age. Though there were many differences between the two relationships, one major similarity was love. Both Debra and her father, and Mick and her father loved each other. They only showed their love in different ways, ways that were typical of the children's ages.

There is a special bond between girls and their fathers, just like Debra and Mick have with theirs. Girls can have fun with their fathers. From my experience, fathers love to make their daughters laugh, and Debra's dad loved to make her laugh. Fathers wanted

to be involved in their daughters lives. They want to talk to them and get to know them as people, just like Mick's father does. However way they go about expressing this, the underlying theme in both these relationships, as well as that of all father-daughter relationships, is love.