Anne Tyler’s popular short story ‘‘With All Flags Flying’’ gracefully explores a number of themes in the tale of eighty-two-year-old Mr. Carpenter. One major idea, underscored by symbolism found in the story, is the concept of freedom and the need to be as independent as possible. Carpenter wants to be as free and independent at this time of his life as he has been for the eighty-two previous years. He spends the whole of the story ensuring that his life choice to be free to live and die where he chooses is met. By looking at the complex, detailed ways Tyler delves into freedom and independence through Carpenter, the importance of these ideas to him—if not all free-spirited Americans—can be better understood.
This theme is laid out in the first scene in ‘‘With All Flags Flying.’’ Tyler opens the story with the statement, ‘‘Weakness was what got him in the end,’’ forcing Carpenter to give up the independence he has by living alone. While he prepares to leave the house he owns, Tyler describes his life to this point, emphasizing his attachment to being free from material possessions as much as possible: In this key description, Tyler emphasizes how much Carpenter values being free of belongings. While he loves his children and family, it is implied he owned much during that period of his life for their sake, not for himself. Living alone as he chooses, he would rather possess only what he absolutely must have.
In these first paragraphs, Tyler underscores this point by describing his home and listing his belongings. He had once owned a farm but had sold it many years ago. He now lives in a tworoom house on a small piece of the land that he retains with ‘‘a few sticks of furniture, a change of clothes, a skillet and a set of dishes. Also odds and ends, which disturbed him.’’ These items include a pen, comb, clothespins, and other small household items. If Carpenter had had his way, he would not have owned any of these items, as they compelled the question ‘‘Why should he be so cluttered?’’ When Carpenter gets ready to leave his house, he puts on a suit, T-shirt, and work boots then packs a change of underwear, a razor, a hunk of bread, and two Fig Newton cookies in a paper bag. When he leaves his home, it is ‘‘without another glance,’’ and he later has his daughter Clara close up the home and get rid of what remains there. Packing everything he owns in a paper bag ‘‘was the one satisfaction in a day he had been dreading for years.’’ For Carpenter, owning as little as possible and living simply has been important to his sense of freedom. Leaving with less is symbolic of Carpenter’s need to be as free as possible.
Tyler contrasts Carpenter’s humble abode with the busy home of his daughter. Clara is married to a salesman with six children under the age of twenty, including Carpenter’s favorite thirteen-year-old Francie. Describing the outside of Clara’s dwelling, Tyler writes that Clara ‘‘lived in a plain, square stone house that the old man approved of. There were sneakers and a football in the front yard, signs of a large, happy family. A bicycle lay in the driveway.’’ Clara has a big kitchen and a guest room for her father. He does not condemn his daughter’s home or life; it is what he wants for her and the rest of his daughters. For him, this time of life has past and he wants to be free of it except as a visitor, and he resists all efforts—much appreciated as they are because it shows they were raised well— to get him to stay. Carpenter prefers the austerity of the old folks’ home, where he has a simple room with beds and a rocking chair, a roommate, and a bureau in which to put his few belongings. There, he is again free from material possessions and has few responsibilities to anyone but himself.
In ‘‘With All Flags Flying,’’ Carpenter’s journeys between places also are imbued with ideas about freedom. When he realizes he can no longer live alone, he does not call Clara to pick him up. He decides to walk along the superhighway from his home in Baltimore County to her home in the city proper. The effort is exhausting, but he knows it is the last time he will be truly free and alone. After some time, a ‘‘young and shabby’’ man ‘‘with hair so long that it drizzled out beneath the back of his helmet’’ on a motorcycle stops and offers the already exhausted elderly man a lift. Carpenter enjoys the ride as ‘‘He felt his face cooling and stiffening in the wind, his body learning to lean gracefully with the tilt of the motorcycle.’’ Tyler adds this statement to underscore what Carpenter is now losing: ‘‘It was a fine way to spend his last free day.’’
Tyler uses the motorcycle as a symbol of freedom. Being on two wheels, moving in and out of traffic with ease, and open to the world in a way a car cannot be are all liberating for Carpenter, who greatly appreciates every aspect of the journey on the bike—except the helmet. Tyler links the motorcycle to his lack of interest in material things at this stage of his life by noting that it is ‘‘stripped to the bare essentials of a motor and two wheels.’’
At Clara’s, Carpenter continues to walk each day, ‘‘fighting off the weakness,’’ but he cannot be free from it. His lack of freedom continues when Clara drives him to the old folks’ home and tells him that she is upset by his choice. Francie comes along and does not want to let go of her grandfather either. As Tyler explains, Francie is ‘‘her usual self except for the unexplainable presence of her other hand in his, tight as wire.’’ Carpenter knows he could not have walked there, but Tyler notes that the first motorcycle ride has given him a taste of unobtrusive freedom that he wishes he could have tasted again. She writes, ‘‘If he had had his way, he would have arrived by motorcycle, but he made the best of it.’’ He has had a taste of this freedom and it means much to him.
Carpenter’s relationship with and pleasure in his granddaughter Francie is also linked to the theme of freedom. Tyler writes that Francie was ‘‘too young yet to know how to hide what she felt. And what she felt was always about love . . . .’’ Tyler emphasizes, ‘‘all he had to do with Francie was sit smiling in an armchair and listen’’ as she talked about her life and her loves. Carpenter appreciates how the young girl can be so free in who she is and what she wants, though ‘‘everything she said made the old man wince and love her more.’’
He knows Francie will not be like this forever, but for now, the time she spends with him fulfills him in a way no other relationship does. She is as free as he was on the back of the motorcycle, with a face open to the wind of life and seemingly endless possibilities. Francie appreciates their relationship as well, as she tries to talk to him about the past so that he might stay, and she accompanies him to the old folks’ home, gripping his hand tightly as she counts red convertibles. She believes that when she finds number 101, it will contain ‘‘her true love.’’ A convertible is not a motorcycle but arguably the closest to it that a car can be. Like her grandfather, perhaps Francie will someday want to be free in her old age.
It is inherent in Carpenter to be free. As Tyler writes mid-story, ‘‘He had chosen independence. Nothing else had even occurred to him.’’ It is why he has no use for anything but the bare minimum of material goods, deeply enjoys the motorcycle ride, and favors Francie over her brothers. When he planned for the time in his life when he could no longer care for himself, he wanted to be free, too. Tyler long had high regard for what Lollie Simpson wanted to do in her later years for this reason. The thin schoolteacher wanted to become fat by eating what she liked, including homemade fudge, sitting in her chair, and reading magazines. She did not intend to care or worry; she believed her choices would accord her freedom. Tyler writes, ‘‘He admired that—a simple plan, dependent on no one.’’
By living with Clara and her family or one of his other daughters, Carpenter believes he will not be free to be himself as much as he will be in an old folks’ home. He also does not want to be a burden of any kind. He despises most older people on this point because they choose to live without freedom. Tyler notes, ‘‘Most, he thought, were weak, and chose to be loved at any cost. He had seen women turn soft and sad, anxious to please.’’ Carpenter cannot live this way or even put himself in this position. It is against his nature. In his own way, he wants to be as free as Francie, as free as he felt riding on the motorcycle, and as close to as free as he was living alone in his own house. None of this would be possible living with family members, in his mind. Though Carpenter cannot be free from weakness nor his age, he can be free of the daily grind of his family’s expectations. He wants to be free to be a carpenter who is building his future and pursuing his destiny on his own terms. Carpenter achieves his goal of a free choice in where he spends his last years, but he must face the next step, which includes living in a home for the elderly where he will have less choice about what he eats, where he goes, and how his day is organized. Perhaps realizing that he has given up some of his freedom so that he can be free from being a burden to his family, he tells himself near the conclusion of ‘‘With All Flags Flying,’’ ‘‘Let me not give in at the end.’’
Source:
Petruso A., Sara Constantakis – Short Stories for Students – Presenting Analysis, Context & Criticism on Commonly Studied Short Stories, vol. 31, Anne Tyler, Published by Gale Group, 2010