Fireflies - Linda Cookson
“Fireflies”
“Fireflies” is a short story, written by Linda Cookson. The short story includes four small stories; these are interrelated in one story. The main character meets a man on a train, where we hear the first story. The man tells about his daughter who had jumped out from a tall building in Japan with a roman candle in her hand, and committed suicide. Then there is the strange dream happening on the beach, where Annie reads Robinson Crusoe aloud for Sophie, and the cave, the monster and the darkness. Afterwards there is a story about who both Annie and the head character had been desperate when they found out that Sophie was handicapped; the darkness of the cave and the darkness they were going through. And last there is the story in the present; this one is about Sophie, Annie and the head characters relationships.
The story is told through the father. We are getting all the impressions through him, through his substantive angle. Sophie’s birth has everything to do with the other stories. The fact that the narrator gets such dramatic thoughts is because he has a daughter he can relate it to. If not, the suicide story wouldn’t affect him. It haunts him. Sophie’s birth is the basic for this story.
In the opening it is a kind of sad atmosphere, because we hear about the girl who kills herself. A lot of the context is not horrific at all; a lot of joyful things happen (the dream – the setting at the home). The only place in the story where the frame of mind is miserable is when the man in the train talks about his dead daughter, and when the parents confess their hatred to the daughter three weeks after her birth. The story is not sad because it ends up with a lot of happiness, because the burden the man and his wife have been carrying in 25 years is finally gone. They confess to each other about how they felt about their daughter and they wouldn’t get this opportunity, if the suicide story hadn’t been told.
When Sophie had been read the story of
“Fireflies” is a short story, written by Linda Cookson. The short story includes four small stories; these are interrelated in one story. The main character meets a man on a train, where we hear the first story. The man tells about his daughter who had jumped out from a tall building in Japan with a roman candle in her hand, and committed suicide. Then there is the strange dream happening on the beach, where Annie reads Robinson Crusoe aloud for Sophie, and the cave, the monster and the darkness. Afterwards there is a story about who both Annie and the head character had been desperate when they found out that Sophie was handicapped; the darkness of the cave and the darkness they were going through. And last there is the story in the present; this one is about Sophie, Annie and the head characters relationships.
The story is told through the father. We are getting all the impressions through him, through his substantive angle. Sophie’s birth has everything to do with the other stories. The fact that the narrator gets such dramatic thoughts is because he has a daughter he can relate it to. If not, the suicide story wouldn’t affect him. It haunts him. Sophie’s birth is the basic for this story.
In the opening it is a kind of sad atmosphere, because we hear about the girl who kills herself. A lot of the context is not horrific at all; a lot of joyful things happen (the dream – the setting at the home). The only place in the story where the frame of mind is miserable is when the man in the train talks about his dead daughter, and when the parents confess their hatred to the daughter three weeks after her birth. The story is not sad because it ends up with a lot of happiness, because the burden the man and his wife have been carrying in 25 years is finally gone. They confess to each other about how they felt about their daughter and they wouldn’t get this opportunity, if the suicide story hadn’t been told.
When Sophie had been read the story of