In “San”, Caroline’s unmet desire is the desire for a more normal relationship with her father. The conflict is between Caroline’s desire and her father’s addiction to gambling. The relationship between Caroline and her father started off mostly positive, and remains positive at times up to the very end. For example, the backstory begins with images of mathematics: “We stood on the corner of Atlantic Avenue, counting cars to learn big numbers. We spent a lovely afternoon in Prospect Park, counting blades of grass aloud until we both had scratchy throats.” Even as her father begins to gamble, Caroline, deep down, sees some virtues in her father. For example, as she is being taught about probability, she “saw it then, deep in his eyes – a spark of excitement, a piece of joy particularly his.” This moment signifies something Caroline likes about her father that she is clinging on to. It is a fleeting moment, as emphasized by the words “spark” and “piece”. The word “spark”, however, evokes what is almost a sort of hope that Caroline still has for her father. But love is not the only thing Caroline feels for her father. Early on in the story, Caroline recognizes that something is wrong. After first finding out that her dad sometimes stayed out late, she is quick to notice that “on good nights, he brought us presents: a sewing kit, a pink silk scarf.” At the time, she knows little of gambling, so she simply refers to nights of good winnings as “good nights” and the rest as “bad nights”. Sometimes, Caroline would have “trouble sleeping. I could feel him slipping away from us, drifting far in search of some intoxicating music.” Here, the term “intoxicating music” seems like comes out of nowhere, but it is not too far from the point. Gambling is addictive and satisfying – to put it another way, intoxicating. The story speeds up near its end. After her father left her family, Caroline’s life becomes stable again. Despite this, however, she no longer feels as complete as she did before, and she often reminisces about her father: “combining birdseed for the feeder on the fire escape in the exact proportions that my father had claimed would bring the most cardinals and the fewest sparrows.” But without her father, Caroline’s life seems to decline: “But I kept studying, seeking the comfort that arithmetic had once provided. Things fall apart, it seems, with terrible slowness. I could not see that true mathematics, rather than keeping track of things, moves toward the unexplainable.” This quote has a double meaning: while it is true that arithmetic is simpler and clearer than advanced mathematics, arithmetic is also associated with the pleasant experiences Caroline had with her father. Finally, the story ends with one more reference to Caroline’s father: “I saw him walking out the door with my flowery umbrella, pausing to look up at the sky and the innumerable, luminous possibilities that lay ahead.” This is the same scene that the story started with, but rather than being described in a neutral manner, positive words are used. Although Caroline knows that gambling is not the best expression of her father’s personality, in the end, she sees in her father a personality of hope and optimism.