In Andre Dubus short story "Killings," the author portrays Matt Fowler in a way that you sympathize with him. Dubus shows in Matt an array of different emotions. As the family attends his son Frank's funeral, Matt displays great sadness and anger in the death of his son. In the beginning of the story even as Matt is grieving the loss of a son, he is plotting revenge. Matt says, "He walks the Goddamn streets", in regards to Frank's killer Richard Strout (84). Matt believes justice won't be served until Strout is dead and off the streets. His comments and actions throughout the beginning of story show that Matt intends to do just that, remove Strout from the streets.
Matt is angry; he is upset that his son's killer is walking the streets on bail, and that his wife sees him on a regular basis in town while she is running errands. He muses, "I didn"t think of bail. I thought I wouldn't have to worry about him for years. She sees him all the time. It makes her cry" (85). Strout walks the streets living his life and Frank's life is over. "This son of a bitch and his gun the last person and thing Frank saw on earth" (91). Matt wonders where the justice is in that. Matt is a protector; he was very protective of his children as they were growing up. As the children climbed the high oak in the backyard he stood underneath ready to catch them in case of a fall. In the winter he made sure the ice was strong enough before they skated. But now that they were grown he couldn't protect them as he did when they were children.
Matt is very devoted to his wife Ruth in fact " every day in his soul he shot Richard Strout in the face; while Ruth, going about town on errands, kept seeing him" (89). He didn't like to see her suffer and thought this would be a way to ease his and Ruth's pain. They felt so strongly for each other that Ruth knew what Matt was thinking before he spoke. "Did you do it?" she said (95).
He said I would stay forever. Forever wouldn't be very long. ... Like most, he had spent his life moving from one place to another, running away from it all, and then going back and enduring the torture and spite with the hopes that things would change, that his father would change. ... It's forever, kid. ... "It's forever. ...
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