Sunday, September 23, 2012

Samuel




"Samuel" a short story by Grace Paley narrates a story of a boy who dies because of the actions of a person. The story starts by telling us there are four boys on a train who are fooling around on a platform. People are watching them but no one does anything to stop them until one lady does but the boys laugh at her. Then, one of the men pulls the emergency cord, which causes one of the boys, Samuel, to fall to his death. Finally, it ends with the reader being told that there will never be a boy like Samuel.

The story has a twist to it because the man may have walked “citizenly” to pull the emergency cord to stop the boys from getting hurt instead he ended up killing someone. If one of the people in the train would have said something, the accident may have not happened.  If you continue reading we are inform that the trainmen knows about this kind of death and knows “how to take the body from the wheels and brakes.” Paley in the end doesn’t write this story to teach us a lesson but it’s her personal response to the death of a boy.

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