Dear American Airlines 1

As the story opens, it becomes explicitly clear that it is a complaint letter. The main character and narrator, Benjamin Ford, is writing a letter to American Airlines requesting a refund. His flight to LA for his daughter’s wedding is cancelled due to weather, and he is stranded in Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Before you even find out that he is missing his daughter’s wedding, and angry tone is created by his sarcastic comments. He pokes fun at his own anger by saying, “Request is too mincy and polite, I think, too officious & Britishy, a word that walks with the ramrod straightness of someone trying to balance a walnut on their upper ass cheeks. Yet what am I saying? Words don’t have ass cheeks! Dear American airlines, I am rather demanding a refund,”(1). The fact is angry enough to send a 100+ page letter of complaint to an airline is a testament to his rage. However, his ability to mix anger and humor tell a lot about the author’s nature. Since he is able to bring out the best in things like being stuck in the airport, it suggests that he has had to deal with anger and hard times in the past. This is brought up again when he says, “Throughout my life I vowed that I would never be the sort of geezer reduced to conversing about nothing save his health maladies.” (4). This insinuates that he has many problems in his own life, and that he is currently dealing with them. One can’t tell whether the problems are emotional as well as physical, but one can assume that since he is missing his daughter’s wedding, he has a few emotional issues.
Later in the reading, a very regretful tone is brought up when he is talking about his past. He references his relationship with his ex wife by saying, “Stella is probably laughing about this. Stella the elder, I mean. Not a happy, lilting laugh: no, more like an acidic, I-told-you-so laugh, as in hahaha once an asshole always an asshole haha…ha,” (12). He has obviously had an emotional falling out with his ex wife and doesn’t keep in touch with her. His feelings of happiness have been replaced entirely with humor and witticisms. He again references his troubled past in the quote, “…my mother used to be crazy and now she’s not. I don’t mean like your Aunt Edna crazy who’s still dancing the tango at eighty and makes uncomfortable blue comments at Thanksgiving dinner. I mean manic-depressive schizophrenia crazy…” (5). Having to deal with the hardship of having a schizophrenic parents at such a young age must have had traumatizing effects on him. It causes the reader to speculate that perhaps that is the reason that his relationships with his wife and daughter have not worked. The book is sure to touch closer to these issues as the book progresses.