In “Powder” by Tobias Wolff and “Father” by Gary Soto are stories that explain the relationships between father’s and son’s life. Both authors have different ways of describing father/son relationships. Wolff explains how many problems the family has because the father not living with the rest of the family has to fight with to see his son. On the other hand Soto explains how connected the father and son are. Although there is differences and similarities, however the differences are stronger.    

     In “Powder” the conflict with the father and son is when the father looses the mother’s trust because he sneaks the young boy into a night club. The father wants to have some fun with his son. However, he was just trying to protect her own son from the danger there was outside. The father had to work on gaining the mother’s trust, he knew that he was being a irresponsible parent. “Your mother will never forgive me for this,” The father knows he is running late to take his son to eat Christmas dinner with the rest of the family. He shows how afraid he is of losing his son, of being able to spent the time he wanted to.    

     In “Father” Gary Soto shows how the son and his father are very united where they always spent time together. They had really good communication where the father taught his son how to plant crops. For instance “Put your thumb like this,” he says when the father was showing the son how to hold the hose to water a patch of dirt. Even though the son’s thumb was hurting because the water was too cold, he didn’t care because he wanted to please his father. It was important for him to have his father happy.     Although, the stories may seem similar, they are very different. The father/son is not the same as in father. For example, in the story “Father,” the father and son are really connected to each other. But at the end of the story the son says, “I did not feel sorrow nor cry” this shows that even though the son and his father were united, he doesn’t feel hurt when he passes away. However, in the story “Powder,” the father fights for his son. He wants to be with him even though he knows he did a mistake in sneaking his own son in the night club. Another perfect example is when the father tells his son “I want us to be together again. Is that what you want?” the son says to himself “I wasn’t sure but I said, ”Yes sir.” He really didn’t care and just showed to his father he did because he wasn’t even sure himself if he wanted to be with his father. The similarities between both of the stories are that both parents enjoy the quality of time they spent with their children. Both parents loved their son’s no matter what happened. They had a nice time doing things together.    

     In conclusion, the authors had different ways of expressing themselves with the father/son relationships. They both had different ways of expressing love towards their son’s. It shows how a father can be very united with his own son but at the end his own son doesn’t end up feeling hurt for him how a father fights with his child’s mother and expects to be forgiven for something he did and knows it’s his fault.