able to find their way home back even far away from home hundreds of miles. One of them is his favorite pigeon which he depicts as “a young plump-bodied bird” and often plays with by calling “Pretty, pretty, pretty”. It is without doubt to say that his favorite pigeon is an embodiment of his granddaughter – Alice. From this image, the old man seems to say how beautiful his Alice is, how much he loves her, and how hopeful his daughter can be like the homing pigeons - always knows the way home back to him, always be with him, and never leaves him alone.
The old man may be still happy if he did not see his granddaughter “swinging on the gate” and “She was gazing past the pink flowers, past the railway cottage where they lived, along the road to the village”. His mood suddenly changes because he knows what his granddaughter doing at the gate, she is waiting for her boyfriend, Steven, the postman’s son. She is eighteen years old and going to get married. The old man does not like it. He is fearful of loosing his last granddaughter. Seeing Alice near the gate brings him a chilly feeling because the gate seems a transition between home and the outside world, childhood and maturity. It will take Alice out of his home, out of his control, enter a new world and never return. He wants to keep Alice for himself and avoids her not being like her three other sisters who got married and then “transformed inside a few months from charming petulant spoiled children into serious young matrons”. That is why he shouts at Alice angrily “Waiting for Steven, hey ?”, then “Think you want to leave home, hey ?. Think you can go running around the fields at night ?”, and finally “I’ll tell your mom”. And we can see “his fingers curling like claws into his palm”. This point describes him as a wild and ferocious pigeon, he becomes aggressively to intervene his granddaughter’s love affair in order to keep Alice always be with him.
The story goes on with the fact that the old man cannot keep Alice. She loves Steven and will marry him next month. “There’s no reason to wait” as his daughter said. This comes to the old man that “He would be left, uncherished and alone”. But as an unexpected wish, Steven comes and gives him a young pigeon because he knows the old man loves pigeons so much. They give him a pigeon which also means they give him a gift of love and respect. Moreover, they are giving him a reassurance that theyare sympathetic with him about the loneliness he has to suffer, and their promise to stay with him. The old man finally realizes that he cannot keep his beloved granddaughter forever. Comforted by the gift of another young pigeon, “he shut it in a box and took out of his favorite”, and sets his favorite free to fly in a symbolic gesture that proves his painful acceptance of the fact that he must allow Alice the freedom to grow into maturity.
At the end of the story, Alice “was staring at him. She did not smile. She was wide-eyed, and pale in the cold shadow, and he saw the tears run shivering off her face”. She cries when she sees her granddad release his favorite pigeon. She knows his action means he loves her so much, he accepts loosing his favorite granddaughter in order for her to be happy with her new life. And more, we do not know if those are tears of joy or sadness or some other feelings.
The story ended with ambiguous conclusion through the tears on Alice’s face. Those tears can be for anyone in the story depending on the readers’ feeling. Moreover, throughout the story, we have learned that we must let go of what we cannot change and how to accept the reality in order to move on with li
There is something about first love, about choosing a Valentine, that concerns most human beings – a rite of passage – a journey from childhood into adulthood and a new way of ‘being.’ A door opens and the future beckons – hopefully bright. But in order to reach it, a threshold must be crossed and sometimes letting go of the past and the present is more difficult for those left behind than for those moving forward.
In “Flight” Doris Lessing brings us to an understanding of this pain, but not from the vantage point of the two young sweethearts, or even from that of the parents, but from the viewpoint of a senior, an elder, a grandfather – as he endures the heartache of a kind of bereavement. The last of his many little grand-daughters has fallen in love and is about to marry - flying the nest for good, unlike the doves in his beloved dovecote – over whose flight he has some say.
Doris Lessing stings our consciousness with the salty tang of tears as she uses the images – both sharp and soft – of doves, needles and tears to help us engage with the grand-father’s bitter sorrow and hurt.
Of course, dovecote birds and carrier pigeons always come back – but that is no consolation to the old grandfather who knows that when his grand-daughter visits, it will never be the same. The carefree child will have become a dutiful and perhaps careworn wife.
The image of the doves is a powerful one – soft and compliant one minute, yet cold and distant the next. Their soft, warm pillow-like plumage contrasts with the thin, chilling grip of their claws. The grand-father feels …..
“ the cold coral claws tighten around his finger”
This is also reminiscent of the youthful dependence of newborns, in the way that their hands instinctively grip an outstretched finger. Indeed grip is an important theme in this short story, for the carrier-pigeons could also represent possession, control or passivity. Power over his birds seems to be the old man’s only consolation as he croons….
“Pretty, pretty, pretty…..” and smoothes the silken plumage of his favorite bird. He is happy for a moment, until he notices in the distance, his golden-haired grand-daughter who is swinging with free abandon on a gate. He knows she is waiting for her true love, the postman’s son.
Annoyed, and perhaps feeling threatened, Grandfather deliberately traps his favorite dove when he senses its thrilling need to take flight. His dominance and control over the dove seems to offer only a momentary salve to his bruised feelings of rejection. After jailing the very thing he is supposed to love in a locked and bolted box, he goes across the red-earth fields to confront his grand-daughter.
She however, is as wild and free as her swinging legs and hair – and is having none of being “grounded” or “controlled.” Her mood turns from polite respectfulness towards her dear grand-father to simmering resentment and defiance at his intervention into her romance – maddened, he has threatened to tell her mother…..
“his fingers curling like claws into his palm.”
The golden-haired grand-daughter wrongfoots him by calling his bluff.
Instantly realising he has gone too far, and that something precious has been destroyed between them, the old man relents for a second. But it is too late. The two sweethearts are now too absorbed in their reunion and their delight in each other’s company to even notice the old man’s futile threats. He tramps miserably up to the house.
Inside, a sharp needle, its point held up to the light, reminds us of the sting of his hurt feelings and wounded pride. It is his own daughter’s needle – she is also the girl’s mother, Lucy, and is quietly busy with her needlework. A sense of imperceptibly controlled order permeates the atmosphere as Grandfather ‘snitches’ on the young heroine.
Unfortunately for him, his own hated daughter and her girl have a deep and profound bond – a close and trusting mother/daughter relationship. Amidst an oasis of calm, order, neatly set tea-tables and careful needlework, the girl’s mother gently but firmly humors her old father and lays out his meal. Quietly, she refuses to end the liason and worse, calmly states that she intends for the couple to marry. Her understated and almost imperceptible control of the home and the situation contrasts sharply with the tumultuous and ‘off-the-rails’ emotions of her father.
Bitterly crying at the inevitability of the forthcoming marriage and his own loss, he dries his wet wrinkled face with his handkerchief. Choked with grief, he sees the young sweethearts approach with a gift. The boyfriend has brought him a new pigeon. Half-consoled, but still mistrusting, he now gives the first, boxed pigeon permission to fly.
The whole family watch, enraptured, as the other birds take flight…….
“they wheeled in a wide circle, tilting their wings so there was flash after flash of light and one after another they dropped from the sunshine of the upper sky to shadow……”
Calm at last , Grandfather turns proudly to look at his grand-daughter. She is …
“wide-eyed and pale in the cold shadow……….tears run shivering off her face.”
Perhaps, after all, she has her own apprehensions about saying goodbye to the past.
These Relationship short stories could be for you if you are a parent of teens, an adult daughter coping with the care of elderly parents, a senior reflecting on life, love and age or a reader who enjoys tight, well-woven colorful stories where the depiction of feelings and sensation are classy and understated rather than graphic and hammed-up.
Doris Lessing’s "Flight" is a short story revolving around an old man and his learning of accepting in life. The author, however, does not let her readers know much about the old man, especially in the sphere of physical appearance. Even his name is not known to the readers. Doris Lessing, alternatively, aims to steer her readers to centre on the old man’s inner feelings, i.e. his weird mood and his consequent eccentric behaviors. A close and careful analysis is essential for us to somehow get a reasonable explanation about his eccentricities.
The old man keeps pigeons and considers the dovecote his refuge. These little birds are seemingly his only pleasure in life, for all of his three grand daughters have gone with their husbands, leaving him with his daughter Lucy and the young Alice. Because Alice is the last grand daughter to stay with him, and because she is going to get married, he feels possessive towards her. Never does he want her to leave as do her sisters. He always wants to keep her, to have control on her, and to never let her leave, for fear that she will never come back to him, like the way he prevents his favorite pigeon from flying back to the sky. He keeps on considering Alice as still a child and on objecting her courtship with Steven the postmaster’s son. This possessive and somewhat selfish attitude has led to his unconventional behaviors. Miserably and angrily he shouts at her, asking her old-fashioned phrases stating his objection to her future marriage, and eventually threatening to tell her mother when she disobeys him. How childish it is for such an old man, not to mention his being her grandfather, to behave like this! Moreover, how can a grandfather be jealous of his grand daughter’s boyfriend? Jealousy, possessiveness and selfishness have blinded him!
The old man seems to isolate himself from everyone with his own way of thinking, which is considerably different from that of his daughter Lucy and of course, that of the young Alice. He expects Lucy, his daughter, to be on the same side with him, yet to his grief, the mother shows no objection to her daughter’s forthcoming marriage. He feels lost, and weeps eventually. Those are tears of anger, sadness and even of the fear of loneliness, for Lucy is his only hope to stand to his side. Tears shed on him again, though implicitly depicted, when he watches the young couple “tumbling like puppies on the grass”, after Steven has given him a bird as a gift. These, however, are tears of tolerance and acceptance, as he realizes the fact that Alice needs to fly and have her own life. He cannot keep her beside him forever. Then he comes to a tough decision: releasing his favorite. Though having “clenched in the pain of loss”, he manages to let the bird soar.
Flight is written in third person, but most of the time it is told through the old man’s point of view. Doris makes it this way deliberately for the readers to get the clearest view of the old man’s mood, which keeps shifting from the beginning to the very end of the story. It makes us know how his mood has changed from being very happy with his favorite when the story begins to being extremely angry and resentful when seeing his granddaughter waiting for her husband-to-be. It also helps us know how he feels hurt and how his pride is wounded when everyone is against him. With this skilful technique and her great talent in utilizing symbolism, Doris Lessing has made the story a successful one, which leads readers to explore the world of inside heart feelings.
In flight, imagery is used in the beginning to show the overall mood. In line 7, the old man is described as, “Content, he rested the bird lightly on his chest, and leaned against a tree, gazing out beyond the dovecote into the landscape of a late afternoon.” This is followed by a description of the land, “In folds and hollows of sunlight and shade, the dark red soil, which was broken into great clods, stretched wide to a tall horizon. Trees marked the course of the valley; a stream of rich green grass the road.” This quote serves the author’s purpose towards emphasizing the peaceful characterization of the old man by comparing it to the equally serene landscape. The rich adjectives depict a beautiful scene for the reader, which once again represents the calmness of the landscape, and, upon reflection, the old man. Another way that imagery is used in
Flights to illustrate the old man’s fear of losing his granddaughter, Alice, and the vulnerability he is subjected to because of it. In line53, this is clear through the writer’s words, “Obstinately he made his way back to the house, with quick, pathetic persistent glances of appeal back at her.” This tells the reader that although the old man is walking away from his granddaughter, what he really wants is to be reassured that she loves him, which she could signify by calling him back or walking towards him herself. The imagery used here is significant in the way that it represents, essentially, the base relationship of the old man and his granddaughter – he loves her so much and wants her to stay with him forever, but his fits of childish pride prevent him from telling her so; instead, he waits for her to come to him so that he might know that she loves him as much as he loves her, but she appears as if she doesn’t need him anymore because she already has a fiancé. Imagery is also used to explain the reason behind the old man’s fear of losing his granddaughter. Lines 94-97, “’Come, now, Dad. She’ll be down the road, that’s all. She'll be here every day to see you.’ ‘But it’s not the same.’ He thought of the other three girls, transformed inside a few months from charming petulant spoiled children into serious young matrons.” show that what the old man is afraid of isn’t not being able to see his granddaughter anymore; it’s the changes that he knows he'll eventually see that upset him. He doesn’t want Alice to become a serious lady of the house – the old man likes her as a young carefree child who he can dote on and play with. This imagery is important because it enlightens the reader as to why the old man is so against his granddaughters marrying. It sheds light towards the main conflict of the story: the old man’s fear of losing his granddaughter
Explore how the writers of the short stories studied communicate meaning to the reader.
Introduction:
The short stories I have chosen to focus on for this essay are ‘‘Flight’ by Doris Lessing and ‘Your Shoes’ by Michele Roberts. I will briefly refer to a third, Graham Swift’s ‘Chemistry’. I will show the character’s desire for control or continuity which conflicts with the choices or sense of independence of another character. I will consider how the writers use the theme of a generation gap, and use symbolism and metaphor to convey meaning to the reader.
Both the writers of ‘Flight’ and ‘Your Shoes’ the narrative technique of symbolism. In ‘Flight’ the grandfather uses a pigeon and in ‘Your Shoes’ the mother uses a pair of new white training shoes (trainers). Both symbolise purity, they are portrayed as precious and in need of being looked after. In both stories, the treatment of the symbolic objects shows how both the grandfather and the mother wish to protect their loved ones from the evils of the outside world. They are also showing that they need to be controlled for their own safety, that in their opinions they are still too young to take this journey on their own. Both of these characters are possessive and don't want to let go of what is dearest to them. Both characters act more possessively due to
previous experiences, the grandfather has seen other grandchildren get married and leave home.
The mother in ‘Your Shoes’ continually refers to her troubled childhood where she felt she was ignored. The text states, ‘She loved you more than she loved me. It isn’t fair.’
The pigeon and trainers are both symbols of the children used in place of the characters that either have or are about to leave home.
In ‘Flight’, the grandfather took control over the bird. He deliberately held out his wrist for the bird to take flight and then caught it again at the moment it spread its wings. ‘Now you stay there,’ he muttered.
He does this because he has seen Alice meeting her boyfriend, he is trying to show control over the bird to demonstrate his control over her. This maybe in a protective way but, nonetheless he is still trying to assert his authority and position within the family.
In ‘Your Shoes’ the mother ties the laces together so they cannot be separated or lost. She holds them tight to her, cuddling them and then puts them away in a cupboard so they cannot run off.
She states, ‘I’d like you to get married one day. I’d like you to have a normal life, of course I would. I’ve tied the shoe laces together so they won’t get separated or lost. White laces that I’ve washed and ironed.’
The actions of these characters
symbolise their feelings towards their loved ones and their difficulty in not being able to communicate their thoughts and feelings directly to the granddaughter of ‘Flight’ or the daughter in ‘Your Shoes’. The writers use these symbols to express their moods or regrets they are feeling within the stories to the reader.
In ‘Flight’ the grandfather shows his contempt of Alice’s boyfriend, ‘Steven’. The text is written from the Grandfather’s point of view and suggests that Steven is an undesirable choice for Alice. The fact that Steven is the ‘postmaster’s son’ is mentioned several times within the text and his comment to Alice ‘Waiting for Steven, hey?’ his fingers curling like claws into his palm, demonstrates it is logical to say here that this simile demonstrates the frustrated emotion, maybe anger that the character feels – he is clenching his fist in an action which suggests he is trying to hold this in. ???
He feels that his granddaughter’s love for him has been replaced, he no longer feels valued or respected and clearly shows his anger and resentment towards, what he sees as the cause, her boyfriend, Steven. This is communicated further when, in an attempt to stop her from seeing Steven, he threatens to tell her mother. When she turns her back on him laughing, and walks away saying ‘tell away’,
this infuriates his anger more but, he tries to exonerate his outburst with a remark suggesting an apology, ‘I didn’t mean…’, it was too late, she did not look back, she had forgotten him.’ The generation gap between himself and the granddaughter is evident by his use of language when he refers to her as ‘courting’ an, old fashioned term in the eyes of Alice as though he is out of touch with the reality of the situation.
In ‘Your shoes’ the mother recognises the distance between herself and her daughter's generation. The text reflects on the time when the mother was a child, how she would have been hit for using such language that was demonstrated by her daughter, and how complacent she was over the enormous presents at Christmas time. How the father and her had worked hard, ‘nearly to death’, because there wasn’t the money. ‘We weren’t spoilt. Not like your generation’.
She wishes her daughter was still a baby. She is frightened by the signs that her daughter is growing up. She admits: ‘I didn't really know you at all.’
In ‘Flight’ a change in the grandfather’s attitude is noted when the realisation of the inevitability of events comes towards the end of the story. He is reminded that Alice is not a child anymore, but a young woman of eighteen. His daughter states that she was in fact seventeen when she
herself married. Also, the other daughters have all married successfully and have three fine husbands. She is trying to make him he see sense for which, he replies ‘She’s the last, can’t we keep her a little bit longer’. The grandfather knows that deep down the reality of life is that the girl will leave. It is the reality that he knows he has to face, but it still saddens him for the inevitable loss. Just like the other granddaughters, she too will flee the nest.
It is possible the narrator intends for the audience to have sympathy with the grandfather. Most parents either have or will have the feeling of loss to endure, the family rituals, even domestic chores, seem pointless now that there are no more siblings to look after.
The turning point comes when Steven has a gift for granddad, a young pigeon. The couple both fuss around the grandfather and lead him over to where the other pigeons are kept. The old man looks after the new bird, and then locks it away in a box. Taking out his favourite bird, the one he would not release at the start of the story, he knows it is too young to return to him, but he takes the chance, he lets it go anyway.
The writer is using a pigeon again to show the grandfather’s attachment and fondness that symbolises his love for his granddaughter.
Alice, Steven and Lucy all see the
pigeon fly up, and the old man gets the impression that everything has stopped, even the wind, to watch this bird escape. So in taking the present from Steven and placing it in the coop shows that he is prepared to let his granddaughter move on, marry Steven, and he too prepared to move forward. He is showing that by letting the pigeon go that he is also letting Alice go, approval without the need for words. He understands.
In ‘Your Shoes’, the mother feels the need to control her emotions something she finds increasingly difficult as the story progresses.
She is constantly asking herself questions to make sense of the situation. She makes excuses for the daughter’s behaviour because deep down, as the story states. ‘Sure you’d never have left if you realised I’d be this upset.’ Her justification for the daughter running away is because she is more like her own mother who displayed a lack of control, too: she was "plump", ‘Fat, lets be honest,’ she said things without thinking, and had rows of shoes that were too small for her but, wore them anyway, rather than sensible shoes. The narrator also quotes ‘My mother was just like you, she liked a drink,’ after finding out that she drinks at parties and smokes ‘pot.’ The comparison between them is constantly being accessed and analysed as though to rid herself of
guilt. The daughter displays a lack of control also: she loses her temper, drinks alcohol, binges on food.
However, the generation gap is more apparent here because of the strictness in the mother’s adolescent years, she did not have the freedom of independence that the youth of today expect, they were required to be more politically correct, behave in away as not to offend or bring the families name into disrepute. This view of the mother translates her standards expected of her daughter and is absolutely shocked and appalled when she is told that, ‘Lots of girls in my class have sex by the time they were fifteen.’ The mother has a morale issue here; she cannot stand proud and in judgement of her daughter when she herself has hidden a dark secret all those years? She said, ‘Of course I never told my mother I wasn’t a virgin, she’d have had fifty fits.’ Insinuating that ‘Pete’ her former boyfriend was the one that took her heart and virginity before she married her daughter’s father.
There where so many things that she needed to say to her daughter but, how could she ever show understanding to her daughter when she wasn’t there? How could she ever be open and tell the truth? The shoes are symbolic, like that of grandfather’s pigeon’s; she can be open and honest and talk to the shoes as if they were her daughter
and explain her feelings. Realisation that, compromise and understanding is needed to move on in life and hope that her daughter is not lost forever.
In Chemistry by Graham swift; there is also conflict between the characters, themed around family and loss.
The Grandfather appears to need the continuity of the family to carry on existing. This is disrupted by the appearance of Ralph. The grandfather, mother and child have more than just a blood bond but, that of the loss of his wife and son-in-law, both close to himself and his Grandson. ‘Swift’ uses imagery with the use of an invisible cord that he uses to pull the boat along the pond, the grandfather waiting at the other side of the pond for the boat to be released and his mother watching from behind. He would hear the Grandfathers voice, ‘Ready’ and, release the boat across the water. This meant that all three where connected to this family ritual. The invisible cord is a metaphor for the emotional bond between them. The bond they share can be described as the chemistry existing between them. They appear to be in balance, to have equilibrium’. This is affected by the introduction of Ralph. The title ‘Chemistry’, has a double meaning. Scientifically, it is the practice of the mixing of chemicals, which the character of the grandfather practices, but also
it represents the delicate balance of human relationships. If you get one measurement wrong, for example, there can be catastrophic results. Two or three of the elements can exist and mix well but, the forth addition has caused confliction with one or more of the other ingredients. This is what has happened with the grandfather, grandson and Ralph.
Although there is a huge generation gap between the grandfather and Grandson their relationship is close, because of the human loss they have both suffered but, more importantly, the introduction of Ralph to the family circle. The grandfather tells the grandson when mixing chemicals together that, ‘Anything can change’. He demonstrated the dissolving of marble chips in nitric acid and concocting another mixture to emphasis his point that even ‘Gold can change.’ By taking out his pocket watch, given to him by his wife many years earlier, he unclipped the chain and held it over the mixture of heated chemicals, ready to be lowered in but, then drew it away, saying to the Grandson ‘You’ll have to take my word for it.’ He goes on to clarify his point by describing his old job, that he could take real gold and change it, (melt it down) ‘We’d take something that wasn’t gold at all and cover it with this changed gold so it looked as if it was real gold.’ The point he is making
to the reader and to the grandson is that although people looked similar as when first seen, i.e. in their deportment and physical shape, peoples feelings can change with the introduction of another element, his mother was the same when you looked at her but her inner structure, chemical make up, was different with the introduction of another chemical, in this case, Ralph.
The grandson has an understanding of his grandfather’s feelings, as he notices that he is spending more and more time in his shed at the bottom of the garden to eat his meals and stay there until it was safe to return to the house and retire for sleep. It states in the story that his mother had driven out the grandfather to his shed, ‘a sealed off world’. Like in ‘Flight’ with the pigeon coop and in ‘Your shoes’ the bedroom, they are a place of retreat, retreating from the outside world and life that is, at its present moment, too painful to bear.
The grandfather finally commits suicide; this could be interpreted as the grandfather’s complete withdrawal from life. Not like in ‘Flight’ where the grandfather accepts the changes that are about to happen and deal with the situation in a positive manner that has being imposed on his family. This man could obviously not deal with the introduction of Ralph that has upset the trio; he could no longer
feel adorned for his gifts of jewellery to his daughter. He had been made to feel an outcaste in his own home, the shed had become symbolic, a coop/bedroom, the theme between all three prose’s is that they are all retreats.
The invisible cord that connected all of them was in danger of breaking. It is at the end of the story that it states things are not destroyed but just simply change. The grandson states that he had a vision, a vision of his grandfather standing in his black overcoat and grey scarf. ‘He was smiling, and I knew the: the launch was still travelling over to him, unstoppable, unsinkable, along that invisible line.’ The memory the grandson had of his grandfather had not gone totally there where still the memories that cannot be broken or taken away.
All three stories are connected through the use of symbolism. They all have conflicts between characters and from the older generations and have all had to face change. The writers show the need for continuity and acceptance that things change in peoples’ lives. The writers communicate this to the reader through the use of the narrative techniques explored in this essay. What is evident is that it is just the normal progression of life moving on, forward.
The theme between all three stories reflects feelings and emotions that can be described
as universal; it is not just subject to a period of time, culture or race. Although, there are conflicts between generations and, which some people could describe as old fashioned values, many can be apparent in today’s society. In general most grandparents/parents will want our children to do well in their achievements and aspirations of life, to succeed where we could not, to be a respected member of society and to follow the morals we try to instil in them, in preparation for a fruitful life that can be traced back through time. It is often heard from people saying ‘My mother taught me that’ or ‘I remember my Grandfather telling me that!!!!!’
Morals, education, wisdom and experience try to prepare all of us for life’s lessons and challenges.
In ‘Flight’ some succeed and move forward with the experiences we encounter and embrace the change with dignity and honour.
In ‘Your shoes’ the narrator portrayed the same emotions of loss but, the mother hid herself from reality, she needed time to come to terms with the outcome before moving on.
The Grandfather’s act of suicide in ‘Chemistry’, was too much, possibly ‘Graham Swift’ was informing the audience that a lesson had also been learnt, in that the grandson experienced a life changing event but, had learnt how to deal with the loss and find the courage to move