Learning Path » 5A Interacting
Analysis of Edward's Mother's Accident
In the Second Chapter the narrator describes the moment in which Edward talked with his father about his mother's accident.
He was fourteen years old and they were in the garden.
His father narrated him what had happened in a winter's day of December 1944 in the railway platform of Wycombe in London.
An hasty traveller opened the train's door before the train stopped and he hit Edward's mother. Her illness, defined as brain-damage, is a consequence of such accident.
The pieces of information are organized in the following sequences:
- Explanation of the reason why Marjorie was in London and what is doing at the rain wail station.
- Description of the scene of the accident. The traveller is introduced as he/she who was on the train, the reader is not provided of his description/characterization.
- Explanation of the consequences of the accident in Marjorie.
- Characterization of the traveller.
The narrator explains who the traveller is, only in a second time to create curiosity in the reader's mind and maybe to convey that people are what they do, not what the are. The reader understands this message because she/he discovered that the traveller was a business man, a gentlemen of the upper classes and she/he finds her/himself (rimanere sorpreso) when she/he realized who he is. She/he is shocked because the traveller did not stop when the woman is on the floor because he thinks that everything is a losing of time but working. He don't realize what happens around him.
Every reader images a different traveller, but nobody thinks at a business man.
The narrator conveys his point of view when he justifies the rash action of opening the door before the time as a conqueror of the traveller's independence. With such action the traveller seems to affirm he is not passive in front of his life. The narrator uses irony to ridicule business man: even if they wait twenty second that the train stops...what could happen? Is this a losing of time? Of course it isn't! The narrator hides the seriousness of the problem to emphasised the gentleman's guilt.