Father-daughter relationship between Buzzard Burbridge and Dina Burbridge

Buzzard Burbridge’s bond with Dina is marked by deep paternal devotion and a sharp divide in how each understands that devotion. When Buzzard, gravely injured and facing the amputation of his legs, begs Redrick Schuhart to save him, his thoughts turn not only to survival but to the children he has spoiled and fears will be lost without him. Later, Dina’s anger at the rescue makes the same family tie a source of accusation: she sees her father’s hold on others as manipulation, and their willingness to help him as foolishness.

A Father’s Plea

In his appeal to Redrick, Buzzard makes Dina’s future part of his own plea for life. He asks to be allowed to live, to have health, and to keep the children; when Redrick promises to get him out if he can and expresses sympathy for Dina, Buzzard answers with her name and calls her his little girl and his beauty. His language is intimate and protective, and his fear is not abstract: he believes that without him she will have to take to the streets.

Buzzard explains that he has never refused his children anything. The indulgence he remembers as care now appears to him as a vulnerability: he fears they will be lost when they can no longer rely on him. He then turns to his son Arthur, whom Redrick knows, and asks whether Redrick has ever seen anyone like him. Dina and Arthur are both present in Buzzard’s anxious account of family, but he singles Dina out with an especially tender appeal. Redrick repeats that he will save Buzzard if he can; the promise is conditional, yet it gives the father’s fear a concrete focus in the possibility of rescue.

Dina After the Rescue

When Redrick later visits the gazebo, he finds Dina seated regally on a large red mat spread across the lawn, holding a glass and wearing a tiny bathing suit. A bright-covered book and an ice bucket are on the mat. The composed, luxurious setting sharply contrasts with the father Redrick has just helped: Buzzard is in hospital, and doctors are going to amputate his legs. Dina is not shown receiving that news with visible distress. Still smiling, she looks toward Redrick with one eye while the other is covered, and she folds a bill repeatedly as their conversation continues.

Redrick tells her to stop and insists that she will not be lost, invoking her old man. Dina cuts him off: she knows that Redrick dragged her father out. Her words are not a request for reassurance but a statement that she understands what happened—and a challenge to Redrick’s decision to intervene. The rescue that answered Buzzard’s plea has not reconciled father and daughter, nor does Dina present it as uncomplicated good fortune.

Loyalty, Anger, and Family

Dina’s account of her father sharply reverses Buzzard’s image of himself as the indispensable protector. She says he has all of them wrapped around his finger and predicts that he will walk over their bones, waiting until he can walk on their skulls with crutches. In her view, even his anticipated return on crutches will demonstrate not helplessness but his power to make others serve him. She invokes brotherly love and mercy with bitter irony, treating the language of care as a means by which Buzzard controls those around him.

That accusation stands against the father’s earlier fear that his children will be lost without him. Buzzard’s plea presents indulgence and attachment as evidence of love: he has refused them nothing and worries about what will happen when he cannot provide for them. Dina interprets the same family history through its costs to other people, particularly the men who have been drawn into helping him. The available scenes do not explain the full history behind her anger, but they establish a genuine conflict in perspective rather than a shared understanding of paternal care.

The Relationship’s Divided Meaning

The two encounters give the relationship its force through contrast rather than through a direct conversation between father and daughter. Buzzard speaks to Redrick about Dina when he is vulnerable and fears losing both his life and his ability to protect his family. Dina speaks to Redrick after the rescue, refusing his attempt to reassure her and condemning the loyalty that brought her father out. Each scene is mediated by Redrick, who first promises to help Buzzard and later faces Dina’s judgment of that promise.

The bond therefore carries two competing meanings: for Buzzard, fatherhood is tenderness, provision, and fear for children who may be left without him; for Dina, his influence is a danger that recruits other people into his service. His threatened disability intensifies the contrast. Redrick reports the impending amputation, while Dina imagines her father walking on crutches and continuing to dominate those around him. The evidence does not resolve which account will prevail; it leaves paternal love and resentment bound together in a family relation that neither rescue nor reassurance can settle.