Characters Tourist Season Enid Shomer

Frieda in Tourist Season: A Character Analysis

Overview

Frieda is a former Women’s Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) who now lives a quiet retirement in a Florida condo with her husband Milt. She is the central character of the story “Tourist Season” in Enid Shomer’s collection of the same name. The chapter traces her struggle to reclaim a sense of purpose and identity after Milt’s retirement disrupts the balance of their life together. Frieda’s past as a daring pilot contrasts sharply with the present, where she feels stifled and invisible. By the end of the story, a raw argument forces both partners to confront aging, loss of agency, and the possibility of rediscovering desire.

Plot Role

Frieda is the protagonist and point-of-view character of Chapter 4. Her internal conflict drives the plot: she must decide whether to accept the life she is living or fight for change. The story’s inciting incident is her daydream about Milt’s death, followed by her decision to volunteer at a hospital. The Polaroid incident with neighbor Irv Snyder triggers a frank marital confrontation that redefines their relationship. Frieda’s actions—organizing the trip to St. Augustine, retrieving the explicit photos, and forcing the difficult conversation—move the narrative from simmering resentment toward tentative renewal.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Frieda is a doer, not a talker. This trait is established early: she “wasn’t much of a talker. She was a doer.” Her motivations include a hunger for independence and meaningful activity. She reacts to Milt’s omnipresence by seeking an outlet away from home. She signs up as a Pink Angel hospital volunteer, explaining, “I spend my mornings with sick people. Some of them are dying, Milt, but at least they don’t expect me to cure them.” This remark reveals her need to be useful without the pressure of being responsible for someone else’s happiness.

Her past as a pilot continues to shape her identity. She recalls flying at 5,000 feet, a sensation of freedom that retirement has erased. Her swagger in her flight suit and the physical thrill of flying are memories she treasures. Frieda also shows compassion: she helps Irv Snyder when he wanders, and she offers to take a new neighbor, Mrs. Duquesne, out for lunch. Yet she is also practical and assertive, as when she insists on the St. Augustine trip and later drags Milt out of the Columbus Restaurant after his tantrum.

Chronological Arc

The story begins with Frieda lying on the balcony, daydreaming of Milt’s death. She feels “deeply ashamed” of these thoughts. She then tries to find activities for Milt—suggesting he invest in another fighter, or run for the condo board—but he rejects each idea. Frieda volunteers at Santa Rosa Hospital as a Pink Angel.

Next, she encounters Irv Snyder, a neighbor with memory lapses, in the elevator. She gently escorts him home. Later, she persuades Milt to join a group bus trip to St. Augustine. On the trip, Frieda reads a book on harems while Milt reads about Jewish prizefighters. At the beach, Irv takes Polaroid pictures of young women. When Irv collapses in the plaza, Frieda retrieves the photos he dropped and discovers they include explicit images of his wife Belle, taken to please him despite his impotence.

That evening, an argument erupts at a pizza parlor. Frieda confronts Milt about how he has been bossing her around since retirement. She admits, “I never really had any meaningful work.” The fight spills into their shared history—her WASP career, his loss of respect—and ends with both acknowledging their fears. On the bus ride home, Frieda reflects that they discussed buying a Polaroid or video camera, and Milt says, “Before everything shrivels up.” The story closes with Milt snoring beside her, and Frieda senses “the delicious hunger that came from surviving one more season.”

Relationships

Milt: The central relationship is Frieda’s marriage to Milt. Before retirement, they had a functional balance: Frieda had solo trips like Greece, Milt worked, and they enjoyed reunions. After he retires, Milt’s constant presence grates on Frieda. She sees the Knoblocks’ divorce as a cautionary tale. The St. Augustine argument is a turning point: Frieda admits resentment about being bossed around, and Milt breaks down weeping. Their decision to buy a Polaroid symbolizes a mutual willingness to rekindle intimacy and accept aging.

Irv and Belle Snyder: Irv’s memory lapses and Belle’s caregiving mirror Frieda’s fears about aging and dependence. Irv’s Polaroids, especially the explicit ones of Belle, shock Frieda but also suggest that even in decline, desire persists. Belle’s confession that she posed “to please him” shows the lengths partners go to preserve connection.

Mrs. Duquesne: The new widow Frieda volunteers to lunch with represents the alternative path Frieda does not want—a life without a spouse. Meeting Mrs. Duquesne briefly makes Frieda feel “relieved and then stricken with guilt” for wanting Milt gone.

Key Decisions and Consequences

  1. Signing up as a Pink Angel: This decision gives Frieda a separate identity and purpose. It also creates physical distance from Milt, reducing daily friction.
  2. Insisting on the St. Augustine trip: This forces Milt out of his comfort zone. Though he initially complains, the trip provides the setting for the critical incident with the Polaroids.
  3. Retrieving the Polaroids: Frieda takes the photos from the bystanders and later hears Belle’s explanation. This knowledge becomes the catalyst for the honest marital conversation.
  4. Confronting Milt at the pizza parlor: By refusing to let Milt’s self-pity dominate, Frieda voices her own grievances. The consequence is a raw but liberating argument that ends with both partners acknowledging their fears and desires. They leave the restaurant without resolving everything, but the conversation continues implicitly on the bus home, leading to the suggestion of a video camera.

Theme and Symbol Connections

  • Identity and Transformation: Frieda’s struggle to transition from WASP pilot to retiree reflects the theme of lost identity. She says the army “trained her to be an ace and then consigned her to a life running back and forth between a turquoise washer and dryer.” The Polaroid camera becomes a symbol of capturing and preserving identity, both literally (Belle’s photos) and metaphorically (Milt’s desire to document before “everything shrivels up”).

  • Marriage and Relationships: The story explores marriage as a negotiation of space and power. Frieda and Milt must adapt from partners who operated semi-independently to a forced togetherness after retirement. Their argument is a renegotiation.

  • Secrets and Guilt: Frieda’s daydream of Milt’s death is a secret she feels ashamed of. The Polaroid incident involves the secret of Belle’s posing and Irv’s impotence. The story suggests that exposing secrets can relieve guilt.

  • Aging and Invisibility: Both Frieda and Milt feel invisible—he as a “old douche bag,” she as someone whose flying heroics were omitted from a book. The line “the sexes did look more alike as they aged” underscores the blurring of identity in old age.

  • Travel and Tourism as Metaphor: The bus trip to St. Augustine literalizes the idea of being a tourist in one’s own life. Frieda’s reading about harems while Milt reads about Jews searching for roots mirrors their own search for meaning. The story title echoes the novel’s title and suggests that characters are visitors in their own history.

5 Book-Specific Questions and Answers

  1. Why does Frieda daydream of Milt’s death at the beginning of “Tourist Season”?
    Frieda feels suffocated by Milt’s constant presence after his retirement. The daydream is a guilt-inducing fantasy of freedom, not a literal desire. She quickly feels “ashamed” but it prompts her to find ways to give Milt separate activities.

  2. What role does the Polaroid camera play in Frieda’s story?
    The Polaroid is both a plot device and a symbol. Irv uses it to document reality and, later, to capture intimate images of his wife. The fact that the photos are explicit surprises Frieda but also initiates the honest conversation between her and Milt. After the argument, they consider buying their own Polaroid or video camera, indicating a renewed openness to sexuality and memory.

  3. How does Frieda’s WASP past affect her present dissatisfaction?
    Frieda’s experience as a pilot gave her a taste of independence, risk, and respect. After the war, she was forced back into traditional roles. In retirement, she feels she lost the meaningful work that flying represented. She explicitly says the army “ruined her life” by training her for competence and then denying her the chance to use it.

  4. What is the significance of Frieda’s line, “I married you for better or for worse. But not for lunch”?
    This line crystallizes Frieda’s feeling that she agreed to a partnership, not a perpetual togetherness where she is expected to be Milt’s companion for every meal. It expresses her need for boundaries and personal space within marriage.

  5. How does Frieda change by the end of the story?
    Frieda begins as a woman who passively endures with guilty fantasies, but she ends by actively confronting her husband and voicing her resentment. The last image of Milt snoring “like an old bear in his den” suggests a tentative truce. Frieda has not solved all problems, but she has initiated honest communication and glimpsed a possibility of renewed connection.

Further Reading