"Balto" TC Boyle Analysis- in progress

Boy, has this been a long time coming.

TC Boyle's "Balto" fully relies on the allusion that one can save another given the want and willpower of an innocent character. We are all familiar with the factual turned folk legend: a young wolfdog saves children in Nome, Alaska who suffer from diphtheria. Balto, and his pack, battle the detrimental snowstorms, disobedient companions and self doubt in order to deliver the medicine that will cure the ailing children.

This leads to the inevitable question: Why did TC Boyle find it appropriate to title the short story of a teenage girl disregarding her father after the young wolfdog who chose to sacrifice everything? Angelle's defiant reactions persecute her father rather than save him. When she dismisses her father's well being and shouts, "'I was,' so loudly that she might have been shouting it to the man with the camera at the back of the long churchy room with its sweat-burnished pews and the flags and emblems and all the rest," the reader is challenged because the expectations of her actions do not meet the hurtful reality.


Angelle, like every character introduced, acts impulsively based upon on her self-absorbed wants. She wants her mother to return home, for her father to become a stable member in her home, and for her well-doing in school to be admired. She wants reaffirmation, just as: 
-her guilty drunk father, Alan, wants an escape from the guilt in which he is encompassed; 
-her young sister, Lisette, who is understandably selfish at nine, wants to be jovial; 
-Marcy, the flippant and beautiful girlfriend who does not belong, wants an entertaining time; 
-Martine, the selfish mother who left for Paris after becoming overcome with frustration with her drunk husband, wants no obligations regardless of the family she left;  
-Mr. Apodaca, whose role is to merely play another reminder of one whom believes has control of a situation, wants a win-- 

all are just as guilty as Angelle. But Angelle is twelve, almost going on thirteen, and refuses to be talked down to. And when the weight of her father's actions is finally understood, Angelle lets him have it.


TC Boyle utilizes this metaphor to tell the tale of a father who's conflicted with an alcohol addiction and the commitment of being a stable parent in a sticky situation. Alan, the overworked father, meets his beautiful and flighty new girlfriend for lunch on the marina in order to ease the stress of the week. After ordering too many bottles (and a cognac, just for the taste), he regretfully realizes he has to pick up his two daughters from soccer practice after school. Typically this is not his responsibility, for even as a single father, he makes a sufficient enough wage to afford an Au Pair whom nannies his daughters. Unfortunately, it is her day off, and Martine (his estranged wife) "is off in Paris, doing whatever she wants." He chooses to drive his car to retrieve his daughters.

It was at the point immediately after the conversation with the valet that Alan succumbs to his own drunkenness. He manages to pursue the drive to the school, but upon arriving, asks his twelve year old daughter to drive the car home. He acknowledges that it's a straight shot home, and that even though Angelle should not be driving, she is mature for her age.

[need to mention bike foreshadowing, change in time]