Eventually, to escape the father's wrath both the mother and her children try to stop the violence by leaving him.
The mother is a gentle loving person who cares and tries to keep her family together. Her characteristics are shown through choice of diction such as "Mother "gentle, loving Mother, who lived for her family and adored her husband, the quintessential traditional woman, domestic and submissive even to the point of martyrdom.""(8). The mother is also emotionally abused for instance if she complains over the father's drinking problem he replies to her, "If you don't like my gate, you don't have to swing on it.""(9). The wife who is kind and passive still tries to keep her family tact but the physical abuse is intolerable. The mother is soft, loving, and forgiving and she blames alcohol for her marital difficulties so "When he drank hard liquor, he was certain to become angry and belligerent, and although he got into fights with other men sometimes, most of his anger was directed at his mother, whom he recalled bitterly, and at his wife; he seemed unable to tell the difference when he wad drinking.""(8). The violence is continuous to the point where the mother's face is unrecognizable. As stated above, the broken vase symbolizes how the mother feels inside and how she physically becomes broken. Physically she was tortured to the point where "The police came and took Mother to the Hospital, where she was treated for broken ribs and a broken nose."" (8). Here the vase symbolized the mother, the vase is broken into pieces and so is the mother. The mother divorces the father but shortly after that she is unable to survive because the "Mother was too dependent upon Dad psychologically, unable to survive on a sales clerk's salary and despondent at the prospect o her children growing up and leaver succumbed to illness and an early death.""(8). The kind mother is unhappy emotionally because her essence of being is taken away from her meaning that her children are leaving her and she can no longer survive on her own.
