So we see from the beginning these three stories share similar themes of childhood experiences.
Chemistry is a very depressing story, the boy loves his grandfather, and he sees a triangle bond between himself, his mother, and his grandfather.
The three go to the pond together to play with the boy’s boat; he sees that the trip the boat makes across the water is on an invisible bonding line.
One day the boat sinks, the boy is heartbroken, and not soon after his mother’s lover Ralph invades and takes over the house, forcing Grandfather into isolation in his shed.
Grandfather doesn’t seem to mind being in his shed, he sees it as ‘freedom’ and shows the boy some chemistry. He tells the boy a valuable lesson that everything can change.
Snowdrops is also quite a depressing story, it is misunderstood until the end what is going on in the story. At the beginning a funeral was mentioned but seems it does not have any relevance to the story. At the middle of the story the mother asks if Miss Webster was in school, which she was not. When Miss Webster does turn up she is wearing a ‘black frock’ (any relevance?) and she makes sure that they see the snowdrops at the same time the funeral passes the school, she then stands at the gates mourning.
Superman and Paula Brown’s new snowsuit’s mood is depressing. The poor girl’s childhood dreams are shattered by horrible documentaries of war, and an incident that she was blamed for.
At the beginning of the story the girl has nice pleasant dreams of superman, near the end superman is gone and her dreams turn into horrible nightmares.
The authors of these stories have different memories but the same kind of plot, each story is set from the eyes of the child. There appears to be two different worlds, the child’s world, and the adult’s world.
All the authors use the technique of ‘setting the scene’; they each keep the conclusion to the end, whether the story has a good ending or a bad ending.
We do not know that these stories are real pastimes of the authors, nor do we know if the writer is trying to create an impression and is using the story as an anecdote.
We do know however know that each story has something very similar; we never know the narrators name.
In Superman and Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit, we see through the eyes of a girl, who is never actually named.
In Chemistry, we see through the eyes of a boy, who is also never named.
In Snowdrops we see through the eyes of another boy, he is never named either.
I think that the authors used this as a ‘mysterious’ technique so you wonder if this was the authors past or if this is just a story the author wrote.
The narrators of each story are similar in the sense that they all suffer a loss.
The narrator of Chemistry, the boy, suffers a few deaths in his past life, his father being lost at sea.
We feel sad for him, he has already lost his father, and he has taken a ‘new’ father from his granddad.
The narrator of Snowdrops suffers only a minor loss, he loses his fantasy ‘child’ world, he comes to reality after seeing his teacher an ‘adult’ breaking down and sobbing.
The narrator of Superman and Paula Brown’s new snowsuit, she loses only a few minor things as well. She loses her childhood dreams and her sleep is invaded by nightmares and cruel thoughts.
She loses her ‘superman’ (her uncle frank) to an accident that she had nothing to do with.
The authors deal with the subject of change as they show how happy times can easily be turned to very bad times easily.
They show how a young boy/girls life can be changed by childlike incidents like blaming people for things they never done.
The authors also deal with how deaths can change a lot of a child’s view of life, and how children sometimes see more than they should.
The authors display the emotions of the characters at key points in the story and show how the narrator deals with the situation. Using words such as ‘Fiercely’ or ‘Slowly’ to display emotions.
Each character goes through the subject of change, whether it’s from a childhood dream or from a childlike world into reality.
My favourite out of each of the stories is Chemistry as I felt that this was the most interesting story. It was interesting finding out about the boy’s past memories, which none of the other stories did. I found out the reasons why the boy, his mother, and his grandfather lived together and what the boy had already been through.
It seemed that the boy had already dealt with the subject of change in his past life and he had dealt with that in an easy way.
The boy seems heartbroken and angry when his grandfather commits suicide and points this out in the line ‘Suicide can be murder’.
The language used in these stories is informative yet childlike, it is easy to read and quick to read as well.
The stories are not very long; about ten pages would be the maximum to expect.
In Chemistry the boy gives the reason of why he recalls certain events e.g. ‘I remember it because it was the same Saturday Grandfather recalled the wreck of my boat’
In Snowdrops, the boy starts off with a confusing/mystifying statement ‘Today Miss Webster was going to show them the snowdrops growing in the little three cornered garden outside the school keepers house, where they weren’t allowed to go.’
This makes us think ‘Who is narrating?’ ‘Who are them/they?’
In Superman and Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit the poor girl is shown the real images of war, and her own mind would not let her look away ‘I blocked my ears to muffle the sound of the men groaning, but I could not tear my eyes away from the screen.’
In conclusion I believe that the authors are very successful in writing these stories and in my opinion each story is well structured and planned.
Each story was very easy to read, quite short but informative.
These stories were very interesting to read; the authors give a whole new aspect to “Short Stories” and have shown me a new way to write short stories.
By Callum Tooey
