Karaktervurdering af essay

Der er en del grammatiske fejl og forkert ordvalg ("danglish").

“Blood is thicker than water”

  Most children grow up idolizing their parents, and as psychologists say, your childhood is the time where you develop the most of your personality. But can you replace a father, with all his responsibilities, to any desultory stepfather? This conflict is what happens to an eight years old boy, in the short story Compass and Torch by Elizabeth Baines, published in 2003.

The short story deals with a boy, who is eight years old boy and whose parents are divorced. He hasn’t seen his father for four months, but now his father has taken himself together to contemplate a trip for the two of them. This trip, which is about climbing up a mountain, doesn’t fall in the boy´s mother - or his stepfather´s taste, but the boy is really thrilled. The main characters are the boy and his father, whose names aren’t mentioned. This comes in a natural way, since the narrative technique is third person. The story is a flashback, in most, but sometimes we get a chronological time. This makes the reader feel like the text and the narrator are reliable, when talking about the trip and the mom´s opinions. Conferring to the trip, his father hasn’t taken the boy for four months, and when he finally does, the boy is intent and ready “[..] Watching Dad. Watching what dad is. Drinking it in: essence of Dadness” (s. 1. 8-9)”, this can as well, argues to say that the boy looks a lot up to his father as an idol. We see the boy looking up to his father and tells him anything and wants to know if the father has the same ideas “Have you brought one too, have you brought a torch?”(s.2 l. 60) and as well due to the compasses the boy says “I keep mine by my bed” and “Where do you keep yours?” (s.4. l. 121). But the father isn´t careless about his son, and he knows that he hasn’t been there for him “He is looking away, seared by the glitter of anxiety in his little boy´s eyes” (s.2 l.46). This shows us that he knows how bad a father he has been. On one hand the boy knows that his father doesn’t care about him, as he should. Inhere he compares his father to Jim, his stepfather, when he shows his torch “It´s OK, the boy decides, that his dad hasn’t looked at the torch, hasn’t studied or handled it like Jim” (s.2. l. 49-50). But on the other hand, he can´t replace his father with Jim “Yes, said the boy, forcing him to acknowledge Jim´s kindness and affirmation. But Jim is not his dad” (s.2 l. 34-35). So despite the fact that the father hasn’t really been there for him the last couple of months, he still loves him.

The author secures about the fact that the man still loves his son when “[…] only one year on from the separation, he has lost his son, his child”. (s. 5 l. 162-163). So after all, it is his child and he regrets whatever bad he has done “[…] the thought grew so strong that he could only half-listen to the child´s earnest desperate voice” (s. 5 l. 163-165) ,and it tells us that we have to get sympathy with the father as well.

Furthermore it seems like the boy is very anxiety, as he father noticed, when he knew that his father had a torch too “We can use both of them can´t we, Dad?”(s.2 l. 64), inhere he is for sure concerned. He often considers about everything, and especially its benefits and drawbacks, due to the two torches “[..] Does this make one of the torches redundant” (s.2 l. 63). But as well as the drawback, he finds a benefit to the two torches when “To torches are for lighting a bigger space in the wilderness for lighting it together” (s. 2 l. 89.), and afterwards he gives the torches values. The consequence of the curiosity is that just a little problem can make him out of it, as when his father told him, that he has forgotten his compass “The boy´s eyes are suddenly wide with fear and dismay” (s.3 l. 88), this shows us that the author wants us to feel empathy with the boy.

Two of the very important objects in the boy´s mind are compass and torch. The torch may be a metaphor to, that even though you have to fight, and suffer; you do have a way out of it. You may say that in the end of the subway, you do have light; you just need to find it. Your guideline is your “compass”, and if you lose that one you just have to be “strong at heart so you can leave behind” (s. 4 l. 119-120). Though you don’t feel, that you have your guideline or light in front of you, you just have to know that your father always is there for you. The father and son - love is indivisible, so for sure blood is thicker than water.

På engelsk benytter man p. som forkortelse for side.

Hvad tænker du i karakter? :)