Janice Galloway's short story 'Someone Had To' - review

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‘Someone Had To’

Janice Galloway’s short story ‘Someone Had To’ is a truly disturbing insight into the mind of a man engaged in violently abusing his stepdaughter.  Through her effective use of narrative stance, structure, imagery and characterisation, we are allowed to see this pessimistic theme in an all too convincing way.

The story is told from the point of view of Frank, Kimberly’s stepfather.  His portrayal .  Through the use of first person narrative, we are effectively allowed to see Frank’s opinions on Kimberly without much intervention from any other characters.  We do see the occasional input from Kimberly’s mother, Linda, but her intervention in slight.  

To begin with, Frank appears to be a decent man whose patience is being tried.  We see that he has attempted to include Kimberly in family events:

‘I gave her a chance.  Took her out with the rest of us, the whole family.’

He initially portrays himself as the attentive step father who is faced with an unco-operative step child.  Kimberly is represented as an unruly teenager with stereotypical teenage attitudes and reactions.

‘Difficult.  Withdrawn.’

Frank appears to be pushed beyond his patience and to begin with, the reader has some sort of sympathy for Frank.

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‘That STARING all the time like I’d done something wrong.’

It can be the case that teenagers can be unruly or insolent in nature and can push people to levels beyond what is natural.

However, as the story progresses, the attitude of the reader is also developed.  We see his punishment of Kimberly becoming more extreme and we begin to lose sympathy with him.  We can still see that he is apparently being provoked and now we see Frank as a decent man pushed beyond his patience.

We see Frank trying to portray himself as ...

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