Mule Killers

Jeg har desværre ikke læst den, men her er hvad jeg fandt på nettet:

Progress can have both positive and negative side effects. Mule Killers is a story by Lydia Peelle which describes a young man’s troubles in the time of progress – in his mind and in the community which is surrounding him.
The story is narrated by a son whose father reveals some secrets from his youth while they are doing an asparagus garden together. The main character of the story is therefore the father, and the setting is the agricultural countryside of America, just by the time wh... ?

“Mule Killers” evokes the farming past of the speaker’s family.

Håber det hjalp lidt...?

det hjalp da jeg læste 4. linie ;).
tak for hjælpen.

Prøv at søge i Forumposter på Mule Killers.
Der ligger en masse om den her på Studieportalen :)

(Fandt denne stil på nettet, den er ikke noget særligt og pas på ikke at gå blindt ind i fortolkningen. men den kan inspirere lidt til temaer og idéer )

The theme in the story is 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. As said before, he lost Orphan too, whom he loved very much indeed, and then in the end he lost his wife. The story does not tell whether he learned to love the mother of his son, but he probably did. She was all he had in life, as he grew older and more mature, he probably learned to appreciate her, and when he finally learned that, she died. Therefore, 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 do not have the innocence of a child, and they do not have the experience of an adult. In the teenage years, the innocence and experience meet, and the teenager creates his or her own identity. The father does not realize the seriousness of the girl’s pregnancy, and most of all he is sure that Eula Parker will marry him – but she will not. He is being very naïve, and he will not admit to himself that he has made a mistake. In the end, he realizes that the world is not as innocent and idyllic as he thought, and the only thing he can do to make it good again, is to stay with the girl. The story represents the time in his life where he was not an innocent child and not yet an experienced man.
It is very clear that the narrator’s father is very childish; he simply does not understand that Eula does not like him, and that he will never marry her. He does not realize the seriousness of the girl’s pregnancy, it seems like he thinks:“it is just a disease that will disappear again”. In addition, he does not understand why his father cries and prays. First, when he is an old man, he realizes why his father cried. He is a bit naïve, when he thinks that it is possible to get Eula’s heart by having sex with her friend. However, we cannot blame the father because he was an eighteen-year old boy when he had his first experience with love. Therefore, he could not handle the situation in the right way, and when we look at the “age” he lived in, we would not be surprised that his reaction was like that, because he lived in a time where people did not talk that much about sex and love. They had a kind of taboo in these subjects. A taboo that I think still exists today among the more conservative Americans.
Over the years, the relationship between the generations has changed. In the time the narrator’s father was a teenager he had nothing to say about marrying the girl. He made the girl pregnant, and he had to marry her. In a time where they did not know about abortion, and if they did, they obviously would refuse the idea of getting an abortion duo to social and religious issues.
If we look when the narrator’s grandfather says to his son: “This is wrong”…”you got no choice but to take care of it. This is wrong” the narrator’s father, did not accept the new agenda, but had to do it, because he had to accept the tradition or just leaving the farm in a dark night under the light of the full moon.
The setting of the story is the agricultural landscape of America, just by the time when the industrial revolution reached the farms in Nashville. The society seems to be very conservative, and is ruled by the traditions. Therefore, they are probably far away from the city, which is more open and free of the more conservative traditions.
The change from mules to tractor symbolizes the transition of the narrators’ father. The transition from a child to an adult, from innocence to responsibility, from a bachelor to a husband.