No Angel free essay sample

Grief is individual because everyone handles his or her sorrows differently. No one wants to be alone and therefore to loose someone you love can be tremendously painful and difficult to overcome. On the one hand you want to get liberated from the pain and loss. You try to compensate from it by forgetting. Others want to keep the memory of the ones they have lost, because they fear the loneliness, and thereby find it challenging letting them go because death is so hard to accept. That is the reason why people find other ways to keep the memory of a lost person, like pretending they see the dead as ghosts or angels. This paradox and theme is presented in the short story ‘’No Angel,’’ written by Bernie McGill in 2010, where our main character deals with the loneliness and grief. The short story is told in first person narrative in a limited point of view. We will write a custom essay sample on No Angel or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page We see the events through our main characters eyes, who’s name we are not told, which gives us a specific and circumstantial information about her thoughts. The disadvantage of this kind of narration is that we only get one point of view and thereby the main character can be essentially unreliable, and important information and happenings can be omitted from the story, but in this case it has no influence on the plot because of the composition in this short story. The composition is jumping in time with flashbacks and flash-forwards. Some of the telling is streams of consciousness, and for that reason the chronological order has been unregulated. As an extension of this, the author tributes the short story in media res, where the story starts in an important and pivotal event. In this first event, which is a flash back in time, our main character is meeting her father for the first time after his death. Here he appears in the bathroom small talking with the main character. The specified and detailed description of the father tells us that the daughter knows everything about her father, from top to toe. Thereby it tells that she was very close to him and to substantiate it ‘’I looked at him, at the thin white hair curling at the back of his neck [†¦] the earth under his fingernails. ’’ Subsequently we jump immediately into another flashback, which is very characteristic for a short story to do. In this passage we learn a little more about our main characters family, which includes the mother, brother, father and daughter. This event also indicates the importance of flashbacks and jumping in time, because it gives an overall picture of the themes, the message and the characters in the short story, but also it intensify the excitement and interest which leads to the climax in the last subsection of the telling. The gallery of characters is heavily increased. We hear about the main character’s brother, Robbie, who is very confident but impudent, a character the protagonist admires in a way, because of her introspectiveness. Then there is her boyfriend, later on ex-boyfriend, Thomas, who also has a very strong-willed and confident personality as seen in this quote ‘’I think it was Thomas’s confidence I fell for. [†¦] If I’m honest, he reminded me of Robbie. ’’ The protagonist is very drawn by this trait of character the two men are in possession of because she is just the opposite, insecure and depended. Also we hear about the mother, but physically it is only the father and the main character herself, who appears in the story. Both her brother, mother and father are dead excluding Thomas. The characters are described implicit based on their actions through the main characters point of view. The main character appears like a very lonely person, and the only one she is in contact with, after the breakup with Thomas, is the ghost of her father, who is most certain a hallucination. We do not directly receive the information that the main character is lonely but from the fact that she has lost hole her family and she sees her dead father, indicates that she misses her family and needs someone to talk to, and maybe is experiencing some sort of depression or worse a psychological illness. The supernatural happenings are connected with the composition. The father’s ghost is appearing in almost every section. He shows up unpredictable but she is not scared or confused by his appearing. In the middle of the story the main character is asking her father, ‘’Daddy, do you ever see†¦? ‘’ but unfortunately he vanishes before she gets to ask him. By this she is referring to the rest of her family, which confirms her missing the rest of the family. Even though she has spent more or less twenty years alone with her father and it seems like the loss do not affect her much she is devastated, which leads us to the last episode of the short story. Here the protagonist sees her father for the last time, and he has brought her brother and mother with him. This gives the main character some sort of clarification and thereby tells her father, ‘’will you leave me alone now? ’’ With this she means that she is ready to let go of her family and live on. With the word ‘’you,’’ she could easily refer to the ‘’grief’’ and ‘’pain’’ she is feeling, and thereby asking if it is okay to let these feelings go. She needs her family because of her insecurities and dependence, which is why she is holding on to the memory of her father and therefore sees him everywhere. By saying the sentence ‘’will you leave me alone now,’’ she also shows a very independed and resolute person and thereby shows a great development, which is very typical in this genre. This leads us to the title ‘’No Angel. ’’ First of all it refers to these supernatural happenings in the short story, second of all the title indicates the theme, to get over your sorrows, and the dilemma between forgetting or remembering the lost ones. Also this sentence tell us something about the title, ‘’you know where we are. ’’ It tells that our protagonist does not want to admit that her family is dead, but when she sees them all in the theatre, she let them go and let them be the angels watching over her from heaven, and thereby moves on. To loose someone is the most difficult thing in life. Some wants to forget, when others want to remember. Some might fail in both. But one thing is certain; you must move on and continue your life. Time heals all wounds. We are born to die and people around us will sooner or later pass away. Therefore we have to love and cherish our beloved ones when they are around because one day we might loose them. We have to remember them but also overcome the pain in our hearts. No angel free essay sample Losing a close relative is something no one is ever really prepared for. It is as well different from individual to individual how you react to the loss of a dear one. On the one hand, you would like to remember them and still let them be a part of your life but on the other hand, you have to move on for the sake of yourself. Living in the past has never proved useful. Many experience this dilemma thus many struggle to decide when the time is to return to the daily life and continue living. This is a painful time Sometimes, the loss of beloved ones can be so heartbreaking that you might still see them in your daily life despite the fact that they are already dead. This could give you the comfort of them still being around, while you can still carry out conversations and feel like they are alive. We will write a custom essay sample on No angel or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The protagonist, Annie, experiences this supernatural situation in the short story â€Å"No Angel† written by Bernie McGill in 2011. The story is told in a first person narrative with a limited point of view, where the reader has full access to the protagonist’s thoughts, however because we are dealing with a first person narrator, we do not hear the story from a different perspective. Thus first person narrators can debatably be defined as unreliable. Another aspect of using a first person narrator is that the reader is able to identify oneself with the protagonist because the reader is basically inside her head. The loss of a family member is a devastating situation, which many can relate to. In this short the period of time does not pass in the traditional chronological order where event A is followed by event B. The story includes nothing but flashbacks. Instead of introducing the characters in the beginning the author has chosen to use in medias res which is an effect where the story begins in the middle of an important event. This method is often used in short stories because of the length limitation on the short story genre. This story begins with a long flashback in which you find out about the first time the main character sees her father after his passing. As soon as this flashback is concluded the reader is brought straight into another flashback. This is very typical for this short story as we jump from one flashback into another one throughout the whole story. In these constant flashbacks you learn about the important characters and events that has taken place. You do not learn much about the other characters in the story besides what the protagonist describes. You are told about her father, whom she refers to as ‘’Daddy’’ and her mother, whom she refers to as ‘’Mum. ’’ The two other characters you hear about in the story are Robbie, the main character’s brother, and Thomas, the ex-boyfriend. The three family members â€Å"daddy†, â€Å"mum†, and Robbie have all passed away and are no longer a part of the main character’s life. Thomas is still alive, but not together with Annie anymore. The narrator mostly describes the characters through their actions. The main character seems like a very lonely person. In the flashbacks she is never together with any friends. She does not have any contact with anyone apart from her dead father, who shows up in her mind from time to time. Even though it is never really indicated that she is sad or lonely, it is a very plausible reason that she sees her father becauset she never got over his death. She must have shared a strong bond with her father, which would make sense, since they were together for nearly 22 years after the tragic deaths of her mother and brother. She can as well be described as an insecure person with very low self-esteem, because she used to admire Robbie’s boldness and high level of confidence, which was something she always lacked. This is also the reason why she fell for Thomas in the first place. He had some of the same boldness and confidence that she admired in her brother. The supernatural elements play a part in the short story and they give the text an uncanny feel to it. E. g. when the protagonist sees her father for the first time after his death she notices that the growth on his face had now turned into a scar. This tells the reader that the father’s body has continued living and functioned even though he has been dead. We are not told why the protagonist has conversations with her deceased father. That is up to the reader to interpret. A possible interpretation is that the loneliness and difficulties in coping with her family being dead makes the protagonist create these supernatural encounters inside her own mind. The title of the story mentions a supernatural element, angels. An interpretation of the title could be that it is a reference to her dad not being an angel. The father’s appearances brings nothing but negative comments with him, and therefore the father might be labeled as â€Å"No Angel†. A different interpretation could be that the protagonist does not need an angel anymore in the end. She does not need her father to be an angel or her guardian angel anymore. Annie’s mind is divided, where one part of her is trying to move on from her family’s death and live her own life. In the last paragraph you see an example of this when Annie asks her father if he will leave her alone now. On the other hand, she desperately needs her family because of her aforementioned insecurities. You could even interpret the last line â€Å"You know where we are†1 as an encouragement for her to join the rest of the family in heaven by committing suicide. This way she will not be lonely, and instead she will be reunited with her family. The overall theme that the author is trying to get across is that time heals all wounds. Everyone has people that they love very much, people that they cannot imagine being gone forever one day. Death is, for many, the biggest fear, however it is also the one thing in life that is certain. Everyone dies eventually. What is important is to remember to love our friends and family, and cherish every moment with them. When they die there is nothing to do about it. People cannot spend the rest of their lives suffering from something that is the most natural thing in life. It is important to remember them but it is also a necessity to overcome the pain and continue living our own lives and try to be as happy as we can be. That is what they would want us to be