Family

Family is an important theme in the short story collection “Fortune Smiles” by Adam Johnson. Family involves mutual love, compassion, loyalty towards, and emotional, spiritual, and physical support of individuals who may or may not be blood-related, but who still behave in the fashion of the traditional family unit. Family can be found consistently throughout Johnson’s collection of stories, and family affects the plot of the stories in various ways.

In “Nirvana,” family means everything to the narrator, who has no real family beyond his wife, Charlotte. In order to care for her, he has taken a leave of absence from work, and tends not only to Charlotte, but to her roses in the garden. The roses that the narrator tends to are symbolic of the love that he shares with Charlotte, and are symbolic of the caring nature of the narrator in general. The...