Aske Peter Hiort-Lorenzen 3.j Espergærde Gymnasium28. januar 2008 Mule Killers Lydia Peele’s “Mule Killers” is an achingly sad story of loss and acceptance. Actually it’s a strange little story told by a narrator, telling the story of his father courting his mother. The storyline runs astride with the tractors essentially putting mules out of work and, so, to death.The text “Mule Killers” is an epic short story. It actually has a multiple point of view, it changes between a first and a third person narrative. This is because the actual first person narrator tells a story in the story. Mostly it is a first person narrative, but in some sentences the story of the father “takes over” and it becomes a third person narrative. The narrator is omniscient and he is used as a messenger. His purpose is to tell his father’s sad story to the readers. Comments from the narrator appears a few places, for example “It doesn’t matter; I can imagine it”, which just makes us remember that it is the narrator telling
about his father and grandfather, and not an unknown narrator. This makes the relations between the narrator and the readers more intimate and makes the narrator reliable. There is a chronological order throughout the story. Direct speech is used a couple of times, but does not dominate the story. Again it is simply the narrator telling his father’s moving story. Despite the narrators comments, he is quite objective in his storytelling, it doesn’t seem like he hates Eula or any of the characters, and it doesn’t seem like he pity his father that much. The story takes place at the ...
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about his father and grandfather, and not an unknown narrator. This makes the relations between the narrator and the readers more intimate and makes the narrator reliable. There is a chronological order throughout the story. Direct speech is used a couple of times, but does not dominate the story. Again it is simply the narrator telling his father’s moving story. Despite the narrators comments, he is quite objective in his storytelling, it doesn’t seem like he hates Eula or any of the characters, and it doesn’t seem like he pity his father that much. The story takes place at the time tractors started to take over the farming and therefore setting mules out of work. The narrator’s grandfather “…goes to Nashville and buys two International Harvester tractors for eighteen hundred dollars, cash…” In the United States The International Harvester and Co. constructed their first tractor in the year 1906. The narrator’s father’s story takes place when the father is eighteen years old. He is then deeply in love with Eula Parker, but she doesn’t love him, and she doesn’t seem to pay very much attention to him. This makes him quite despairing, and he ends up with Eula’s friend who we only know as “the pale haired girl”. The day comes when Orphan, the two men’s favorite and beloved mule, are taken away. The grandfather gets very upset and sad. On top of that, the pale haired girl tells the son about her pregnancy. This shocks him very much, and he doesn’t know how to tell his father. Exhausted and sad the grandfather comes home in the evening, and in a rush his son tells him about the girl. He doesn’t intend to be a father, he wants to marry Eula. He sees his father cry that night, and thinks it must be because of the Orphan. It is very clear that the narrator’s father is very childish; he simply doesn’t understand that Eula doesn’t like him, and that he will never marry her. He doesn’t realize the seriousness of the girl’s pregnancy, it seems like he thinks it’s just a disease that’ll disappear again. Also, he doesn’t understand why his father cries and prays. First when he is an old man, he realizes why his father cried. In the end the father and son are together picking asparagus in what used to be the narrator’s mother’s garden. She is now dead, and nothing has grown in the garden since she died. It is very clear: he must have married the boring girl; why else would they be in her garden? When the mother lived, the garden was filled with beautiful flowers and herbs, now it is a big wilderness. As said before the father was very childish at the age of eighteen. He was very immature and he didn’t understand the cause of his actions. Of course he has become more experienced and mature through the following years, but first in the end he admits who his father really cried for that night. The theme in the story is absolutely unrequited love and its consequences. The narrator’s father never gets what he wishes for; he must deal with the second best. Eula was taken away from him, and Orphan was taken away from him too, he had to die because of the technological progress. In the end he even lost his wife. Text 4, the poem “To His Lost Lover” actually describes the father’s life well. The poem is about a man who lost his love, and he never fulfilled his wishes with his love. We don’t know if she died or if she left him, but in both cases it matches the father’s life: he never had Eula, but he did dream about them doing things together and getting married. As said before, he lost Orphan too, who he loved very much indeed, and then in the end he lost his wife. The story doesn’t tell whether he learned to love the mother of his son, but he probably did. She was all he had in life, and as he grew older and more mature, he probably learned to appreciate her, and when he finally learned that, she died. So he has had several lost “lovers” through time. Another theme is the change from child to adult. Teenagers are no longer children, and not yet adults. They don’t have the innocence of a child, and they don’t have the experience of an adult. In the teenage years the innocence and experience meet, and the teenager creates his or her own identity. This is described very well in William Blake’s poem “The Ecchoing Green” from 1789. The first two paragraphs describe the innocence of childhood. Children are playing on the green, the sun is rising, the merry bells ring, the birds sing laud and the old people are laughing – it is all very idyllic. EngelskSide