Living by Perfection

In Stephanie Vaughn’s narrative “Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog” the title is a controlling metaphor for the father’s mentality on life. He believes if he lives in a precise and perfect manner, mimicking the meticulousness of the phonetic alphabet, his life will be perfect. However, in a moment of imprecision, he loses his perfect life. In the events thereafter, his inability to adjust his manner and adapt to a new life cause him to …showed first 75 words of 822 total…

…showed last 75 words of 822 total…thus he parishes in squander. Gemma, on the other hand, learns from her father the risk of attempting to obtain complete perfection. She proves she will not fall into the same lifestyle because she “remember[s] the beginning of the alphabet, up through Mike and Nan…and remember[s] the end. X-ray, Yoke, Zebra” (623). However she hasn’t meticulously studied the entire code, and will not be stanch on using it throughout her whole life.