dea that like Odysseus, who is a mythical figure whose traits are nearly impossible to mimic, the men that Bob sees are mythical, they exist only in Bob's perception of them.
             That Bob fails is to be expected. He is trying to become the perfect image of a man, the kind of image he sees in Carl Yazstremski, Ted Williams, and liquor advertisements. Bob wants to be the kind of man that he thinks his brother Eddie or childhood friend Ave are, the kind of man his father was not, but there is no real depth to the images that Bob perceives, no truth behind the facades. This is best exemplified by Bob's image of his Brother Eddie, who Bob says "sure as *censored* seems alive to me," (Banks, 28). The distinction that Bob makes between being alive and being dead, which he thinks he is, relates to an aspect of selfishness in Bob. Different events or benchmarks mark off life times: the first tooth, the first date, graduating high school, getting married, etc. If a person has a profession, one that allows for continuous growth and increasing income, a new level of benchmarks become available. Bob does not have these options, however. He is involved in a trade that, while steady and dependable, does not offer the chance for personal or financial growth. Because his life has become stagnant, because he has no more benchmarks to measure himself against, and his prospects only look to improve slightly, Bob believes that his life, or more accurately, what life means to him, is over. Now that Bob is settled into the life that most people in his part of the world try to obtain, he feels that there is nothing left for him to do, and so he focuses on the success he perceives in other people and resents the fact that he will never have it living the same safe as his ancestors in New Hampshire have lived.
             Eddie is the very picture of the success that Bob wishes to obtain. Eddie has it all, a beautiful wife, an impressive hou...