Summary: In the story With All Flags Flying the old man who is the main character of the story wants to go to a nursing home. He goes to his daughter’s house to tell her that he would like to stay with her for a short while and then go to a nursing home. When he first arrives at her house she laughs at him because he rides up on a motorcycle, but her mood quickly changes when her father tells her that he would like to go to a nursing home. She tries over and over to convince him that he should come to live with her instead of going to the nursing home. He says that he has made up his mind and there is nothing that she can do to stop him from going to the nursing home. He didn’t want to be a burden on any of his daughters and he knew that eventually he would be a burden on them and they would just put him in the nursing home anyway. He had too much pride to be put in a nursing home so he just put himself in the home. At the end of the story the man’s daughter finally accepts her father’s decision, and he goes into the old folks’ home.

Crisis: The crisis of the story was that the man wanted to go to an old folks’ home, and his daughter didn’t want him to go.

Resolution: The crisis of the story is resolved when the man’s daughter finally lets her father go to the nursing home, even though she has some reluctance to let him go.

The story is told from the person is told from the third person perspective from the man’s point of view. The story doesn’t have I, my, we it uses his, and man, but you still know what he is thinking.

There are two different kinds of conflict in this story person vs. person (the man versus his family) and also person vs. self (the man against his self pride).

Character development:

The man, who is never referred to by name, develops throughout the story. At the beginning of the story he didn’t really want to go to the nursing home, but at the end of the story when he finally goes to the nursing home he realizes that it isn’t as bad as he had previously suspected.

Themes:

1. Pride- the man has too much pride to be a burden on somebody, so he chooses to go into the nursing home on his own. “He had chosen independence. Nothing else had even occurred to him. He had lived to himself existed on less money than his family would ever guess, raised his own vegetables and refused all gifts but an occasional tin of coffee. And now he would sign himself into the old folks’ home and enter on his own two feet, relying only on the impersonal care of nurses and cleaning women. He could have chosen to die alone of neglect, but for his daughters that would have been a burden too- a different kind of burden, much worse. He was sensible enough to see that.” (pg. 72)
2. Stubbornness- the man in this story is very stubborn. Throughout the story he has many people trying to convince him to come live with them instead of going into a nursing home, but he so stubborn that he won’t listen to a word that they say. “ I don’t want to live with you- I want an old folks’ home” (pg.69)