An Analysis of the Short Story Stolpestad free essay sample

It is nearing the end of his shift when he gets the call to go help a kid with his dog. It turns out the dog is sick or injured and needs to be put down. Stolpestads state of mind is expressed as he is driving to go help the kid: â€Å"Just a calm quiet spin around to this kid and his dog, back to all the turns you were born, your whole life spend along the same sad streets† (ll. 10-11). Stolpestad reminds himself of how miserable he thinks his life is, living in the same boring streets where he has lived all his life, doing a job he seems to find very tedious. The repetitiveness of his life gets portrayed again as he arrives at the scene, he seems to know everything that is going to happen next, as if he has done it a million times before: â€Å"She’ll ask you if you’d like some water or lemonade, if you’d like to sit a minute, and you’ll thank her and say no and shift your weight from one leg to the other† (ll. We will write a custom essay sample on An Analysis of the Short Story Stolpestad or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page 58-60). Stolpestad eventually decides to put the dog down with his own personal pistol so he will not have to do any paperwork. He also decides not to shoot it in the brain, but in the neck by the collar so the wound will not be as visible. All this seems as if he is trying to make his job as easy as possible, by choosing not to do paperwork, and to shoot it in a less visible place so he does not make the owners mad. This eventually turns out to be a bad idea, and the consequences of this unhealthy state of mind are shown as he comes home from work, after having already visited the local bar (and lied about it to his wife). At his front porch is the kid and his father who tells him that they found the dog to still be alive when they wanted to bury it, hours after Stolpestad had shot it. At this point Stolpestad realizes that he cannot go on living a tedious life of repetitiveness and failures, and decides to escape from it all, possibly by suicide: â€Å"Wavering as you back away from the porch †¦ away until you’re gone at the edge of the woods, a piece of dark within the dark† (ll. 161-162). The ending is very open for interpretation, but suicide seems like a plausible explanation. The author uses many devices to express the state of mind of Stolpestad, one of those devices being the narrative technique. The story is told in a very unusual narrative. It is told in a second person point of view; it is written as if Stolpestad is the reader: â€Å"this is your life, Stolpestad† (l. 5). By referring to Stolpestad as ‘you’, the author makes the reader put himself in Stolpestad’s shoes, and thereby feel more connected to his feelings as they are portrayed in the story. Furthermore the story is also written in a very slow and monotone pace. One of the ways this is done is by using parataxis throughout the entire text, and also using -ing form very often: â€Å"Presses himself to her side, catches his breath, his eyes going from you to your uniform, your duty belt, the mother†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (ll. 8-19). In this sentence we see both the parataxis and the -ing form being used, we also see the author being very descriptive, and this again adds to the very slow pace of the text. The intention of this slow and descriptive pace is to add to how repetitive and boring Stolpestad seems to find his life. Another crucial component of the text is the setting. As I have said before, Stolpestad lives and works in the same city, even the same neighbourhood, where he has lived his entire life. The city is, like everything else in the story, described as very repetitive and as a place Stolpestad knows in and out, just like he seems to know everything else that is about to happen. The laziness and despair that is present with Stolpestad also seems to be present with other inhabitants of the city. When he arrived by the kid’s house, he found their backyard to be full of garbage, old tires, bottles, paint cans etc. and the grass has not been cut and is very tall, as if the owners did not bother to make their home look presentable. This further underlines how everything around Stolpestad seems to reek of resignation. The weather too is a bland middle-thing between sunny and rainy: â€Å"†¦ sun never breaking through the clouds, clouds never breaking into rain† (ll. 2-3), this pretty much sums up the mood of the story; Stolpestad is tired of his boring and repetitive life of misery and mistakes. This brings me to the message of the story. The message is tied together with the mood of the story, and Stolpestads reaction to what happened with the dog. We are many times directly told that Stolpestad hates living like he does, but despite of this he has done nothing to change his ways. The message of the story is that you have to be the change you want to see in your life. Stolpestad has had many years to figure out that he is miserable doing the same thing day in and day out, since he has done it for his entire life. What we see in the end of the story is that Stolpestad has reached his tipping point. He has experienced one too many disappointments in his life, and decides to make an end to it, exactly how he does this is up to the reader. Stolpestad is a man in need of change, everything he does feels dull and repetitive, and when he makes a very critical mistake during his job, he finally reaches his tipping point. The state of mind that Stolpestad is in gets expressed in the text through both the narrative technique and the setting. The text is very slow and descriptive, which clarifies Stolpestads feeling about his life. The setting is a city full of the same boring apartments and streets everywhere you look, and the weather is also cloudy and boring. The clear message of the story is that you have to be the change you want to see in your life, you cannot let the bad things in your life take control.