In my reflection of The Dew Breaker I’m going to the story “Night Talkers,” where Danny is trying to get through past traumas about his family. He wants revenge, but he doesn’t really know if he can actually go through with it. Danny lost his parents at the age of six. He had built up a lot of anger and he wanted revenge on the man that murdered his parents. Danny learned of the whereabouts and occupation of his parents’ killer, he says, “The man who had killed his parents was now a barber in New York. (p. 105). So he went to look for him and he mound out a detail from some guys, he says, “Some guys from work had told him that a barber was renting a room in the basement of his house. ” (p. 105). He is trying to get through his most traumatic part of his life by revenge. He talks about how he saw his parents, “The smoke was so dense he could barely his parents, his mom was slumped over his father on the ground. ” This was his great trauma that was so hard for him to overcome.
Over the years he had so much anger towards this man, the barber, that he wanted to Just kill him. So he did so much to try and get as close as possible to him. He tried to see the barber very often he say, “He visited the barbershop regularly for haircuts. ” (p. 106). He did this so that he could Just study the barber, he just wanted to be close to a this man that took so much for him. Danny really wanted the barber to recognize him he says, “He never turned down the shaves, for he thought it would give him a chance to have a closer look at his face, to remember him. (p. 106). He wanted the barber to know who he was. He wanted him to know who his killer would be and the reason why Danny had so much hatred for the barber. The barber though never showed any signs of remembrance of this man he would have. Instead all he saw was a man that was difficult to shave because he would shake and sweat off the shaving cream. Finally Danny had his opportunity to get his revenge on the barber, because the barber’s wife had went on a retreat.
When Danny finally had his chance to kill the barber he says, “Looking down on the barber’s face, which had shrunk so much over the years, he lost the desire to kill. This is the point Danny realizes who he is and comes to realization of why he cannot kill this man. Danny explains why he cannot kill the barber by saying: “It was the dread of being wrong, of arming the wrong man, of making the wrong woman a widow and the wrong child an orphan.
It was the realization that he would never know why – why one single person had been given the power to destroy his entire life. ” (p. 107) He would be no better than the barber if he went though with this. At this point he Just has a lot of hate, but not really towards the barber. He feels as if the barber should of Just shot him too along with his parents. From this point on he decides to Just move on from his desire of revenge, because he realizes it will not help him, it will only destroy him more.
