Again, the only source here appears to be the child, although the Grandmother could be a witness. The narration here is extremely important. It is full of description that allows us to get an insight into what the child is feeling, along with what is happening to the Grandmother.
The child pulls back her Grandmother’s covers and sees that ‘there was a bloody stump where her right hand should have been, festering already.’ Again the child uses the knife, this time to hold down and restrain her Grandmother. We are also given a feeling of time – the fact that it says ‘festering already’ gives the impression that the amputation must have happened recently.
Another twist comes in this already complicated story. When the child sees what has happened, she crosses herself and alerts the neighbours.
‘…And cried out so loud the neighbours heard her and came
rushing in. They knew the wart on the hand at once for a witch’s
nipple; they drove the old woman, in her shift as she was, out
into the snow with sticks, beating her old carcass as far as
the edge of the forest and pelted her with stones until she fell
down dead.’
Again, the narration is pivotal here. It allows us to see the ambiguous, different levels of this story, and makes us begin to ponder them. Did the child scream simply because she was scared, or did she want the neighbours to come running? Did she want them to see the wart that our attention had previously been drawn to? If that is the case, did she actually want the neighbours to kill her grandmother? The child knows the beliefs of her culture, and so makes the neighbours think that she is a witch. So you see, the narration gives us many levels to this story, but also gives us many questions.
In this part of the story, we are again told of the mysterious ‘they’, although this time they are the neighbours. Again, it is in the third person, but the use of ‘they’ again makes us think that the narrator must be someone on the outside, looking in. However, there is a mix of tenses here, which only adds to the confusion – it switches between past and present.
The way in which this part of the story is written is very powerful – the part which tells of the Grandmothers killing is all said at once, which serves to heighten the emotion and tension that the reader feels.
The final line of this story is for me perhaps the strangest of all.
‘Now the child lived in her grandmother’s house; she prospered.’
This is in the third person, and although not exactly in the present tense, it does feel like it is happening now. If the child had wanted her Grandmother dead, here we have a motive – the house. In retrospect, it is the perfect murder – the child manipulated the neighbours into killing the woman, and nobody questioned it because the woman appeared to be a witch. In our society, we tend to overlook what we don’t want to see, and maybe that is why the woman had avoided being killed for so long.
It doesn’t mention how the child reacted to the death, nor does it mention the child’s mother, who provided the reason for the child to go there in the first place. We are still not told who the narrator is, although it must be someone close to the child to know that she prospered. This is an odd ending – for me, the story seems to be somehow incomplete. We are given no names, no definite locations, and no clue as to whom the narrator really is. We are only given what information we can gather, by looking at Narrator, Source and Witness. The narration has been strange throughout, and in that respect, the story is ended perfectly – what better way for it to end than by the narration becoming stranger than ever?
And as for the question of what is a hero? In some aspects, this child is a hero, but not the typical kind. She is powerful, and builds the world the way that she wants it, but she doesn’t have sacrilege of others – she sacrifices her Grandmother for her own happiness and chance to prosper. So she is a hero - just not one that we would normally expect to find.
The next story that I am going to discuss is ‘Half-Brothers’ by Elizabeth Gaskall. The title of this alone sets us up with expectations –it automatically makes us think that the bond between these brothers isn’t very strong.
Unlike Werewolf, this story is set in a very definite location – Cumberland, and later Brigham. The narration at the start gives us a lot of background information, and tells us the events that had led up to the main part of this story.
We are told that the mother was a young widow, and had had a daughter, who had died shortly before Gregory was born. Here the narration is very powerful, and gives us a real insight into how the grieving mother must have felt. When the child died, the mother appeared to become frozen, and showed no emotion at all.
‘…she sat holding the poor wee lassie’s hand, and looking in her pretty, pale,
dead face, without so much as shedding a tear.’
On the day of the funeral, it snowed – a metaphor perhaps to signify the freezing of the mother’s emotions. Whatever it was, it is something that Gaskall felt deeply about as she herself had lost a child as well.
However, after Gregory was born, the tears flowed freely and she cried all the time. It is at this point that we get the first feeling of what Gregory’s relationship is like with his mother. She seems obsessed with Gregory, unable to think of anything else.
‘She seemed to think of nothing but her new little baby; she hardly
appeared to remember that either her husband or her little daughter
lay dead in Brigham churchyard.’
At this point in the story we do not know who the narrator is. So far there has been only ‘I’, no definitive name. One aspect where this story differs greatly to Werewolf is the aspect of time. Whereas Werewolf took place over roughly the same time period, Half Brothers appears to be moving very fast – covering weeks and months in a matter of paragraphs.
Through the narration, we are told how money was tight, and how they had to struggle to survive when the mother’s eyesight began to fail. Gregory’s aunt, Fanny, appears to have become a father figure, taking care of the family and making sure they all had enough to eat, no matter how little food there was. We are told how Gregory always got the best of everything, no matter who else went short.
We are given the source of this story – we find out that it has all come from Aunt Fanny.
‘It was Aunt Fanny who told me all this about my poor mother,
long after her death.’
Although this story is all in the first person, the above quote shows that the story is all ‘second hand’ information, which means that maybe we are seeing a slightly biased view, a view that is not 100% accurate.
We are soon introduced to another main character in the story – William Preston. We are told that he was later to become the narrator’s father, and that he is wealthy, which gives the impression that he had a quite a high status compared to what the family had previously been used to.
‘He was reckoned an old bachelor; I suppose he was long past forty,
and he was one of the wealthiest farmers thereabouts.’
This introduction of William immediately seems like a godsend – the family are struggling financially, and all of a sudden along comes this wealthy bachelor who has the power to solve all of the family’s problems. The story goes on to tell of how William proposed to the narrator’s mother, together with the promises that Gregory would never want for anything. This man is taking on a family struggling to stay afloat, and he appears to be doing it willingly – and Gregory’s mother accepts, thus saving her family from potentially starving to death. However, we do get an inkling that all is not what it seems.
‘…and Aunt Fanny heard her cry as if her heart were breaking.’
Why should the mother be crying – surely she should be happy? Or maybe she is only agreeing to marry him for the security of her family – if that is the case then is she a hero, putting the needs of her family above her own happiness? In this part of the story we hear more about the mother, and so it seems fitting that here is where we are first told her name – Helen. The story continues:
‘…as Aunt Fanny used to say, she herself would have been a
far more suitable match for a man of William Preston’s age than
Helen, who, though she was a widow, had not seen
her four and twentieth summer.’
There is an emphasis on Helen’s age here, as well as an undertone of jealousy from Aunt Fanny. Aunt Fanny tells the narrator how the couple never asked her advice, and how, eventually she began to take a ‘brighter view of the marriage.’ It is here that we get the first real ideas as to just how much Aunt Fanny adores and focuses her attention onto Gregory.
‘But much as she had loved Gregory before, she seemed to love him more now.’
It is as if Aunt Fanny is attempting to ‘blinker’ herself from what is going on around her – and she has good reason, as we soon find out that Helen and William’s marriage is a loveless one. Again, Gregory is the object of affection, and William soon realises it.
‘But she did not love him and he soon found it out. She loved
Gregory and she did not love him.’
The narrator tells how Helen really came alive when she was with Gregory, but how she had only ‘gentle words as cold as ice’ for William, making us wonder further whether she did only marry for her family’s security. William is jealous of ‘the ready love’ that Helen had for Gregory, and is hostile towards him, even going so far as to one day loose his temper and swear and curse at Gregory.
Here, time becomes slightly skewered. The narrator says;
‘…my mother took to her bed before her time and I was
born that very day.’
This is the part in the story where the narrator is born, but we have had no mention of the pregnancy up until this point. Perhaps the narrator saw this event as insignificant and too unimportant to mention, but how could one see one’s birth as being insignificant? We are told how William, whilst being unable to ‘accept’ Gregory, is delighted that he has a son and says that he is sorry for the state that his wife is in. Maybe William also had an ulterior motive behind this marriage – Helen married for security, but maybe he only married in the hope that she would provide him with an heir.
Here, the narrator tells how his mother’s condition deteriorated soon after he was born, and how, even though William would have ‘coined his blood into gold’ to save her, there was nothing anyone could do. The account of the mother’s death is very vague, and there is little or no concept of time.
One thing that is clear in this account of the mother’s final days is how desperately she wanted her two sons to be like ‘proper’ brothers.
‘One of her last requests was to have Gregory laid in her
bed by my side, and then she made him take hold of my
little hand.’
Although these brother’s were indeed only halves, Helen wanted them to have a full relationship, and it is from here onwards that we really get into the heart of the story and find out what is behind that ambiguous title.
Even after Helen’s death, William continues to hate Gregory. He is not really his son, and so sees him as a burden. Aunt Fanny is the one who looks after the narrator, and we are told how the Aunt’s feelings have changed towards Gregory. She no longer adores him exclusively, instead aiming her affections towards the new baby. There does appear to be a barrier between the brothers from the very start, from the father taking the new baby out with him to the fact that Aunt Fanny was now ‘completely engrossed’ in the new baby and seldom thought about Gregory. Aunt Fanny very obviously has a better relationship with Gregory, and something like that is bound to put hostile feelings between siblings.
As the story continues and Gregory grows older we get an insight into just how badly he was treated compared with his younger brother, and just how deeply this affected Gregory himself.
‘But everyone said he was stupid and dull, and this stupidity
and dullness grew upon him.’
It goes on to say;
‘…the schoolmaster grew weary of scolding and flogging, and
at last advised my father to just take him away, and set him
to some farm work that might not be above his comprehension.’
However, although Gregory was treated badly and seen as stupid, and even though he began to believe it himself, he still tried his hardest to act as he thought he should.
‘…he was not a cross lad, he was patient and good natured and
would try to do a kind turn for anyone.’
It is after this description of the way in which Gregory was brought up that we are led into the main event of the story. The narrator tells of the differences between himself and his brother, and then launches into a tale of how, one night he was sent on an errand. It is winter, and on the way back, the boy loses his way. The reader feels the panic of the narrator, as he realises he is lost and that his shouts are achieving nothing.
‘Only the noiseless, pitiless snow kept falling thicker, thicker –
faster, faster! I was growing numb and sleepy.’
Here, the reader really does feel the tension that is building up, the feeling of the snow enclosing, engulfing the narrator until he can hardly breathe. This is also when we realise that the narrator knows how much Aunt Fanny adores him. He asks whether this was to be ‘the end of all her cares for him’ and describes how his short life passed before him, much like a vivid dream. However, just as things are looking really desperate, the narrator hears a cry. He thinks that it must be ‘some mocking spirit of the Fells’ but then he realises – it is Lassie, his brother’s devoted collie. At this point, the reader also breathes a sigh of relief, as we also feel the release as the moment of panic comes to an end. We are then left wondering – will Lassie come to his rescue? Will the narrator be able to yell for help? These questions are soon answered, as the narrator raises his voice and cries out for the dog. The dog does come, but not without hesitation.
‘…with her intelligent, apprehensive eyes, as if fearing lest
I might greet her with a blow, as I had done oftentimes before.’
This is the first indication we get that the dog has been mistreated – perhaps as a knock on effect of the families attitude towards Gregory. Gregory himself soon follows the dog – proving that even though he has been shunned compared to his older brother, Gregory is there for him in his hour of need. The narrator shows the first real affection towards Gregory that we have seen so far, and falls upon him, clinging to him for dear life. And that is the really ironic part of this story – there is a definite divide between these brothers, put there by the father and Aunt since birth, but when it comes to the crunch, ones life depends on the other ultimately.
Again, the suspense is built up here, as the brothers try to find their way home through the snow and the dark. The narrator begins to feel a ‘deadly fatal sleep’ steeling over him, and seems almost ready to give up his fight for survival.
‘Sleep I would, were it only for five minutes. If death
were to be the consequence, sleep I would.’
However, Gregory puts his brothers safety over his own and shelters his brother by rolling him in his maud and making him lie beside a rock. At this, the narrator says;
‘I felt him unkind thus to keep me from slumber.’
This phrase shows that the divide between the two brothers’ is still present, be it only on the narrators side. Gregory is putting his heart and soul into saving his younger brother, and yet the narrator still thinks Gregory is unkind. However, it is Lassie that eventually saves the day.
‘Hie thee Lassie, hie thee home! And the white faced, ill
favoured brute was off like a shot in the darkness.’
This shows the narrator has similar feelings towards the dog as he does his brother – he finds it hard to let go of his hate and just accept and be grateful for the help. He uses the terms ‘brute’ and ‘ill favoured’, both of which associate negative feelings towards the dog.
In these fraught moments, the brothers seem to come together and begin to feel regret for the bond that might have been between them. Gregory seems to feel this especially, as he tells the narrator. This is the only time that either of them mentions the final moments that they spent with their dying mother, and that intimate moment in which she joined their hands.
‘She put thy small, wee hand in mine – I reckon she sees us now; and
belike we shall soon be with her.’
At this point, the narrator finally succumbs to the sleep that has been threatening to overcome him. When he awakes, his first word is ‘Gregory?’
This is when we find out that Gregory has died. This has a sad irony however, as, by saying his name when he first woke up, the narrator has finally acknowledged his and Gregory’s relationship. However, he has only managed to acknowledge it once Gregory has died, and there is a sense of loss here, a sad sense of what might have been. It has taken a crisis to make him realise what they could have had, and that single word says it all.
The father echoes this sentiment as well. At the beginning of the story he mentions leaving his land to the narrator, which is when I raised the question of him only wanting an heir. The way he feels about Gregory now therefore becomes clear when he says;
‘I would have given him half my land – I would have
blessed him as my son – oh God! I would have knelt at his feet and asked
him to forgive my hardness of heart.’
The father is regretting the way that he treated Gregory, and, like the narrator, it is ironic that he can only do it in death.
Right at the end of the story we are told what I think are the most heart wrenching lines yet.
‘I was covered over with my brother’s plaid, and his thick shepherds
coat was carefully wrapped around my feet. He was in his shirt sleeves
- his arm thrown over me – a quiet smile (he had hardly ever smiled
in life) upon his still, cold, face.’
What makes a hero? In my opinion, Gregory was exactly what makes a hero. He had been undermined and insulted for all of his life by his supposed family, and yet when it came to the penultimate moment, he threw caution to the wind, totally disregarded his own life and thought only of saving his brother. The fact that he was smiling in death when he never smiled in life shows that he did do that out of the goodness of his heart, and that he felt good as a result of it. Whereas in the Werewolf the child did what she did for her own gain, Gregory had everybody’s well being bar his own in mind when he did that final, heroic action. Gregory is a typical hero, sacrificing his own life for another, and he plays his part to perfection.
The third and final story that I am going to discuss is ‘The Sexton’s Hero’, also by Elizabeth Gaskell. Like Half Brothers, this title also sets us up with expectations – we expect to find a hero at the end of it.
Unlike Werewolf, but in a similar way to Half Brothers, this story is set in a definite location to begin with – a grassy churchyard. It is a picturesque, and has a view that the narrator cannot ‘speak of adequately’ There is lots of imagery and description in the first paragraph, description which makes us feel that we are really there, drinking in the scenery as well.
‘…long flower laden branches of the climbing rose tree,
trained against the inner side. Beyond, lay meadow green
and mountain grey, and the blue dazzle of Morecambe Bay.’
It is not long before we are introduced to the first solid character – a man by the name of Jeremy. We don’t however, find out the name of the narrator, although he does strike up the first conversation.
‘How would you then define a hero?’
This links back with the title – the introduction of the theme of a hero is almost immediate in this story, whereas in the other two it was subtler. Jeremy answers this question with what most of us would assume to be a hero – one who ‘acts up to the highest idea of duty that he has been able to form, no matter at what sacrifice.’ They go on to discuss different types of heroes, including military heroes. Then the two are startled by a third voice, and the Sexton named in the title is introduced. The narrator says that at first they had noticed the Sexton, but not taken much notice of him, as if he were one of the headstones. This would indicate a difference in class – the Sexton was not worthy of their notice to begin with.
The Sexton appears to have been listening to their conversation, and he offers his own opinion.
‘I think you’d both have given in to thinking Gilbert Dawson a hero.
At any rate…I have reason to think him so.’
This first speech from the Sexton immediately intrigues the reader. Who is Gilbert Dawson, and why does the Sexton class him as a hero? Whilst Jeremy seems eager to hear what the Sexton has to say, the narrator takes a different view, confiding in the reader that he felt ‘impatient at the interruption.’ This is a gentle lead into the Sexton’s story – instead of launching directly into it as she could have done, Gaskell coaxes the reader in, making us want to fid out more. It is at this point that the Sexton begins to tell his story. Although the narration stays the same, the story is related exactly as the Sexton is telling it, and so the source of the story thus becomes the Sexton.
The Sexton begins by telling of the location of his story – Lindal, and describing where it is located. He then tells how he had been there not two years when Gilbert Dawson came along.
‘He were about as strapping a chap as I was and, as we
were like in the same trade we were thrown together
and took mightily to each other.’
The Sexton at first tried to be equal with Gilbert, but then he realised that Gilbert ‘fancied a girl that the Sexton dearly loved’. This girl is described to us, and it is clear that the Sexton feels deeply for her. He realises that Letty liked Gilbert in return, and strong emotion comes across when the Sexton tells of this.
‘Lord God forgive me! How I hated that man!’
This is very to the point, and adds the already religious references that we have had so far – the churchyard, the Sexton and now the references to God.
We are told how the Sexton challenged Gilbert to a fight, and Gilbert did the very thing that was to be his downfall – he refused to fight. Instead, he asked pardon for whatever he had done, and said that he would never fight.
This is the point in the story at which things start to go downhill for Gilbert. The Sexton scorns Gilbert for this, and says;
‘I was so full of scorn at his cowardliness that I was
vexed I’d given him a second chance.’
But Gilbert still shows himself to be noble – he stands his ground and sticks to his guns.
‘I cannot fight, because I think it is wrong to
quarrel and use violence.’
Gilbert is mocked and teased for this, not just by the Sexton but by the other villagers as well. Gilbert is called a ‘mother’s moppet’, a ‘pretty dear’ and effectively a wimp, all because he stood up for what he believed in. As the Sexton says, ‘such a thing as refusing to fight had never been heard of afore at Lindal,’ and once the villagers got over the shock the shunned Gilbert as well.
The Sexton comes across Letty soon after this. She confesses that she loves Gilbert, and that she had begged him to fight because she could not bear to see him scorned in this way. But still Gilbert refused; even at the request of the woman he loved.
This part of the story is cleverly set up so that the reader is intrigued and wants to read on. There is a mention of Gilbert’s ‘wild death struggle’, which, while giving away the ending wets the appetite of the reader, almost compelling us to read on. However, in the next breath a shock comes – Letty marries the Sexton. This shows that she followed the community – she acted like a sheep, and instead of sticking by the man she loved, she married somebody for whom she would not be scorned by the rest of Lindal. After this marriage, the Sexton says that Gilbert appeared to change.
‘Gilbert kept aloof from everyone, and fell into a sad,
careless way. His step used to be brisk and sounding,
now his foot lingered heavily on the ground.’
Basically, Gilbert was an outsider. The other lads refused to include him, and eventually Gilbert just stopped trying and accepted his fate. The only person that would accept him was an old clerk.
The Sexton admits that after he had married Letty and ultimately got what he had always wanted, he left off hating Gilbert and even began to pity him. Gilbert seemed to get on well with children – they were always around him ‘like a swarm of bees’, as they were too young to know what a cowards he really was. This is also when we get the first mention of the Sexton and Letty’s baby. It as no name, and in this paragraph, it is the only time that the Sexton refers to it as ‘our baby’. This is interesting, as Gilbert is mentioned in almost the same breath. Did the Sexton feel the need to be possessive of the child where Gilbert was concerned? The baby is referred to as ‘it’ in the next paragraph, which in contrast seems very impersonal for someone you would think is loved so much.
It is in this paragraph that we get the first indication that something is going to go wrong. The Sexton and Letty are on their way to a wedding, and the Sexton says;
‘…last time I ever saw Letty laugh heartily; and for that matter, last time I ever
laughed downright hearty myself.’
This again sets up questions for the remaining part of the story – what is going to happen to make the Sexton and Letty so unhappy?
The trouble starts innocently enough – with the couple realising that the sun has set, and that time is getting on. The Sexton describes with thorough detail the exact location of where they were when this happened, as if to deflect from the obvious panic that is going to ensue. Much like in the half brothers we feel the Sexton’s panic, and we feel the suspense at the realisation that they are lost and running into trouble in the water.
‘It were growing darker and darker above and around us,
all but one line of red light above the hills.’
This part of the story has a slightly claustrophobic feeling – ‘above and around’ gives the feeling of enclosure, of deep setting panic. The tone of the story becomes more frantic, like the sea closing in on Letty and the Sexton. Gaskell uses phrases like ‘rushing tide’ and ‘like a galloping horse’, all of which build up the tension well –because the Sexton himself is telling the story, we really feel the panic ourselves.
The Sexton is trying to be quiet so as not to frighten Letty – the only words that he mutters are ‘Lord help us!’, which is again a religious reference. They have a pig with them in the back of the cart, and this pig is screeching and squealing for dear life – the Sexton is staying silent, and it is almost as if the Sexton’s fear is being conveyed through the pig.
As the situation they are in becomes more treacherous, there are more references to God. He mentions that the squealing was ‘God’s answer to his prayer’, as it drew attention to them, and he also says that ‘God can work through many a scornful thing.’ This makes us wonder if he ‘found’ religion after this experience – maybe that is when he decided to become a Sexton?
We are next told of the panic that both the horse and Letty are getting themselves into. Letty’s concern is for her baby, and it is here at this late stage in the story that we finally get a name got the Sexton.
‘I think John – I think – I shall never see baby again!’
Again the baby has no name, which still seems rather impersonal, as if it is an object instead of a beloved child. Letty begins to scream, and the Sexton pulls out his knife to ‘spur on the old mare’ showing just how much he cares for Letty – he would rather hurt his horse than listen to her be in torment like that. As before in the story, we get a suffocating, enclosed feeling here.
‘The mist, the heavy mist that was like a ghastly curtain
shutting us in for death.’
The Sexton then says
‘Letty told me after she heard her baby crying for her.’
Although this tells us that Letty does survive, it also shows how deeply she cared for ‘baby’ – she told herself that she heard it crying, and that gave her the incentive to fight and carry on through the storm. The Sexton says that he didn’t hear the baby crying, but he makes excuses in the form of ‘it was miles away at any rate’, perhaps showing us that his relationship with the baby isn’t as solid as the one that Letty has.
In the next paragraph, the Sexton uses many dark, sombre colours, as if to convey the saddening of his mood and the general dark tone of the situation that they are in.
‘We thought we saw something black against the deep
lead cover of wave, and mist and sky.’
In the next breath though, as the ‘something black’ gets closer, the Sexton’s tone gets slightly calmer, and he starts to use words like ‘slow’ and ‘steady’.
This object emerges from the mist like a miracle, and who should it be but the shamed and scorned Gilbert Dawson, here to save the day. Gilbert says that he was guided by an ‘animals shriek of terror’, showing that all the squealing that the pig did did pay off in the end. As it turns out, Gilbert was worried about Letty and John and had gone to watch for them, like a guardian angel, which turned out to be their blessing. The Sexton says;
‘If all had gone well, we should ne’er have heard of it.’
This does raise a question though. The Sexton and Letty were among those who had scorned Gilbert from the start, and so why was he watching over them? As it was, Gilbert didn’t say that he had been looking out for them – the Sexton heard it later from ‘old Jonas’.
Gilbert sets about bringing Letty and John to safety, but, as in half brothers, the Sexton cannot bring himself to let go of the dislike for the person that is saving his life. He still worries that the feelings between Letty and Gilbert are there.
‘…and for temptation sir: - if he had ridden off with Letty, he
would have saved not me.’
After all this time John is still jealous of Gilbert and what he and Letty did have, giving us a deeper insight into the Sexton’s nature. This would indicate that not only is he jealous, he is also paranoid as well.
It is at this point that Gilbert’s heroic actions really begin to come into their own. He was made an outcast by his community, and he seems to have accepted that, which I think is quite sad. He no longer cares for his own life, and is willing to give it up for two people who hated him.
‘At any rate, you are a husband and father.
No one cares for me.’
Those last words of Gilbert’s seem so final; as if he has accepted his fate, and the fact that there is nothing he can do about it. It is now that the Sexton realises what Gilbert is doing, and Letty acknowledges it with ‘God bless you Gilbert Dawson.’
And with that, Letty and John leave Gilbert to his fate, and set about making it back to dry land. Once they do, the Sexton goes in search of someone to go and rescue Gilbert, but finds that nobody will. Old habits die hard after all.
John takes Letty back to ‘her’ baby, and then he himself went out and searched for Gilbert. This for me is perhaps the biggest sign that he has let go of his hate for Gilbert and wants to save him. He goes back to that shore, perhaps again risking his own life, but this time his only thought is for Gilbert. This is with no avail however, and Gilbert’s body is washed up two days later. It is then that we find out that Gilbert wasn’t all alone in the world, and that people did care for him. His friends came ‘over from Garstang’ to go to his funeral, and afterwards, the Sexton begs Gilbert’s sister for something that once belonged to him. The sister then throws him a bible.
‘It were a black leather one, with pockets at the side, old –
fashioned wise; and in one were a bunch of wild flowers. Letty
said she could almost be they were some she had once given him.’
There is slight irony in this, in the fact that Gilbert had kept that small gift from Letty, even after all that had happened to him.
The Sexton finds out that Gilbert was a man who knew the gospel well – there were many marked passages in the Bible, many of which showed how Gilbert felt about certain things, and above all, these passages ‘more than bore him out in his refusal to fight.’
After that night, Letty was never the same again, and when she and John had another baby, they names it Gilbert Dawson Knipe, showing that they had indeed acknowledged all that Gilbert did for them, and that they had finally let go of all hostile feelings towards him.
Then the Sexton’s story ends, and with it this particular story comes to an end as well. It is an odd ending, slightly sentimental, but brings us back to reality with a start.
‘He turned to his work, and we, having rested
sufficiently, rose up and came away.’
In my opinion, Gilbert Dawson was above all things a hero. He sacrificed his life for another, even though those people were the ones that had played a principle part in making him an outcast. He took his faith from God, and that was perhaps the driving force behind his final, selfless act. He was courageous and inspiring, and above all, should be someone that we all look up to.
I have covered three stories in this essay, and each shows us a different kind of hero. But all were heroes in their own way. In Werewolf, the girl was a different kind of hero to what we would normally expect – she is powerful and sacrifices another’s life for her own happiness, but she does not have the sacrilege that most heroes show. In Half Brothers and The Sexton’s Hero, the heroes are quite similar –each sacrifices their own life in order to save another, and both saved people that had previously been cruel to them. I think that, above all, Gilbert Dawson was the most heroic. Although Gregory in half brothers acted much the same as Gilbert, he saved his brother, albeit a half brother. Gilbert on the other hand showed that we can let go of grudges and he saved the very person that had made him an outcast in the first place, and that, I think, is something that we should all admire and be inspired by.