ENGL 100 Take-Home Assignment: Summary of 'A Father's Faith'

This assignment is an academic summary of Miriam Toews' essay, "A Father's Faith." The essay recounts the author's reflections on her father's suicide and his lifelong struggle with depression within the context of a strict Mennonite community. The summary highlights the societal pressures, particularly the stigma surrounding mental illness and the religious prohibition against suicide, which the author argues contributed to her father's silence and ultimate decision. The author explores her father's cheerful demeanor before his death, contrasting it with his hidden suffering, and reflects on her own teenage experiences and family secrets. The summary emphasizes how the Mennonite faith's emphasis on avoiding actions against the Church's doctrines, including suicide, led to her father concealing his depression, preventing him from seeking support. The author concludes by emphasizing the insidious nature of depression, which often makes it impossible to provide help by the time it becomes apparent. This document is a summary that provides insights into the author's arguments and themes presented in the original essay.

Running head: ANALYSIS OF A FATHER’S FAITH
Analysis of A Father’s Faith
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ANALYSIS OF A FATHER’S FAITH
This essay seeks to summarize the story “A Father’s Faith” written by Miriam Toews in
the year 1999 which talks about the depression of the writer’s father. The main thesis of the
essay is to show how societal pressure can compel a person to suicide.
According to the story, “A Father’s Faith”, Melvin Toews, father of Miriam Toews, on
the morning of 13th May, 1998, walked out of the Steinbach Bethesda hospital where he was a
patient for nearly two and a half weeks (Toews, Miriam). On his way, he was quite cheerful and
greeted on old friend of his. He even exchanged pleasantries with a waitress in a restaurant. He
then stepped on to the train tracks near a railway station, right in to the path of an oncoming
train. He was dead by the time anyone realized what had happened.
By the time the author got to know about her father’s death, she started to contemplate on
the past deeds of her father and his behavior. She was envious of the students of her father as
they had a firsthand experience in how carefree and enjoyable he was (Toews, Miriam). Miriam
even thought about the time when she was a teenager. During this time, like all teenagers, she
wanted to escape her home and live by her rules. During this time, she also became aware of
other things such as the fact that her grandmother was an alcoholic. She also realized that every
single family had a secret of their own. The secret of her family was that her father was in
depression his whole life. No one in the family was aware of his depression.
According to the story, in the Mennonite faith all acts which are against the doctrines of
the Church will attract the punishment of being shunned (Lawrence et al.). This also included the
act of suicide which was considered to be a sin. Melvin Toews was a man of immense faith and
in order to remain within his religion, he decided to keep his illness a secret from his entire
community. As a result, he did not share his problems with anyone else which only pushed him
towards depression. The author also mentioned in the story that her family was so religious in

2ANALYSIS OF A FATHER’S FAITH
nature that even her grandmother kept quiet about her drinking problem. Her father often spend
his days in silence and did not talk much to anybody at home. When the author was young, she
did not pay much heed to this as she had her own teenage problems. However, after the death of
her father, she reflected back on these moments in order to garner some explanation.
In conclusion the story “A Father’s faith” tried to show that depression has a habit of
unknowingly creeping in to a person’s life. By the time the depression starts to manifest itself in
the daily lives of the concerned individual, it is too late to provide any kind of support to the
person.

3ANALYSIS OF A FATHER’S FAITH
References:
Toews, Miriam. "A Father’s Faith." The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose-Third
Canadian Edition (2017): 369.