A Literary Analysis Of Star Food By Ethan Canin

In the fictional short story “Star Food”by Ethan Canin, the seventeen-year-old protagonist, Dade, works for his parents at their family-owned grocery store in California. Throughout the story, there is a woman that comes and repeatedly steals from the store, and Dade lets her go each time until her fourth attempt to steal. But when he does catch her, his intentions change and he releases her. Dade lets the woman go at the end of the story because he realizes that instead of being what his parents want him to be, he wants to take his own path and make his own decisions.
Dade is very conflicted trying to be what both of his parents want him to be and what his future should look like, and this is what causes him to release the woman. His parents …show more content…
He believes in letting the woman go despite not knowing her or her motives for stealing from the store. After releasing the woman, Dade expresses that “when they slept that night, [his] mother would dream of discovery and [his] father would dream of low-grade crooks. When [he] thought of this and the woman [he] was sad. It seemed you can never really get to know another person” (17). Dade knows deep down that catching the woman is not what he wants, but he is blinded by the desire of attaining his parents’ approval. His father wishes for Dade to step up and catch the woman, because that is his responsibility as a worker at Star Food, especially if he is destined to take over the store someday. However, his mother gets disappointed in him when he starts to express his motives for doing so. Immediately after Dade catches her, he impulsively chooses to guide her to an escape. In this moment, Dade becomes enlightened and realizes that that is what he believes should happen even in the abyss of not knowing people and their motives. Along with that, he expresses how lonely taking his own path is; he mentions, “I felt alone in the world… and, from somewhere, other people’s voices could be heard” (page 17). He makes his own decision without knowing if it is truly the right thing, and this isolates him. He witnesses other people’s actions and their purpose for doing them, but because he has always relied on his parents on how to act, his decision is dubious to him on whether or not it is just. Although to some extent, despite this feeling of loneliness, he feels content with his decision because it is his