Mule Killers

Mule Killers
Essay by Frederik Hansen 3.c

Life’s path is decided by the choices we make. Sometimes we do not think the consequences through and we make mistakes. Even though it is human to make mistakes it can close the door to all your dreams and your life’s path might be forever changed.
The short story ”Mule Killers” by Lydia Peele deals with a man who tells his son about the story where he, as a young and immature man, made a mistake which affected his further life so his dreams of love could never be fulfilled.

The short story takes place in two different times. One part takes place in the present, where the father and his adult-son are picking up asparaguses in the garden while the father tells a story from where he was 18 years, which is the main part of the short story. The main part of the short story is set in a small town in the country near Nashville, Tennessee. It is a rural environment where people often bump into each other and where there is only one drugstore. It takes place at the time where the industrialization really had its breakthrough, which can be seen in the change from mules to tractors.

The narrator of the short story is the man, who is told a story by his father. The father, who is the protagonist of the short story, is telling his son a story from the past where he was a young man, and the son passes it on to the reader. In that way the father’s story is told with a third person narrative angle with the father’s point of view, and it seems natural for the narrator to comment on the story, for instance: “If my father had understood what his father was trying to tell him, maybe he would have waited until the next morning.” But this kind of narrator is also one that we cannot trust, because he is only told the story himself. Therefore he cannot know whether the story is totally true, or if some parts are being left out.
In the present the father is in the mid-fifties and is described as a high man. We know nothing about his contemporary life except that he has a 36 year old son, whose mother is dead. When he was 18 years, he was madly in love with a woman called Eula, but instead of telling her about his feelings, he tried to make her jealous by going out with another woman and before he had a chance to think things through, she was pregnant. He is only referring her as “the other girl” and he never mentions anything positive about her, which shows that their relationship is of no meaning to him. He was only thinking about Eula, even when he and “the other girl” made love in the hayloft he tries to imagine Eula’s face. In the present the mother of his son is dead, and she has probably been his wife, because it is told that the garden where they are picking up asparagus once was her.

In the traditional society, the only right thing to do for him, when she got pregnant, was to marry her, even though he wants to marry Eula. Back then feelings were undermined by more “important” things as status, pride and dignity. “He is trying hard to keep certain things stuffed deep inside his chest…” Also the fact that his father (the narrators grandfather) only knew about right and wrong tells the story of a society without any tolerance for people who was any different from the other, and where no mistakes could be dealt with. If you did not do what the community expected you to do, it would freeze you out. The protagonist has trouble dealing with feelings, because the community has taught him to hide them away. “He expects to outgrow all of these things very soon, and in the meantime, he works hard to keep them hidden”.

When the protagonist for the first time ever saw his father cry, he was filled with guilt. He felt he had to stick with his father and the community even though it meant that he would let go of his dreams of being with Eula. His father also had to let go of his dream about the traditional agriculture with his mules because the machines were taking over, which he had a really hard time dealing with: ““son”, he says, “you are gonna see a future I can’t even stretch my mind around”…” They both “killed” a dream and that is why the title is called “Mule killers”.

A theme in the story is unrequited love because the protagonist loves Eula of all his heart, but he can never have her because it would go against the community’s opinion, and it would set him, Eula and both their families in a very bad light. Another theme in the short story is contrasts, because it is filled with contrasts for instance the contrast between right and wrong, between good decisions and bad decisions and also between having feelings and hiding feelings. It divides the short story very sharply up in the good and the bad sides of life.

In the end of the short story, the garden which once was the mother’s is described as a messy and wild place filled with weeds which edges to the closely moved lawn. The garden symbolizes the relationship between the protagonist and his wife, because it is contains unwanted and chaotic things in the middle of a beautiful garden, like the relationship was unwanted for the protagonist and ruined all the dreams he had. The only thing that grows in the garden is the asparaguses, which comes up every year. The asparaguses symbolizes his love for Eula which will never end, therefore he picks them up every year.

The poem “The Ecchoing Green” by William Blake follows the day structure, because the sun arises in the beginning and descends in the end. It can be seen as a life cycle where, in the first two stanzas, all the good and innocent sides of life is presented, like it is for a child, and in the last stanza the good things have an end and you have to deal with the dark sides of life like an adult has to. “The sun does descend / And our sports have an end.”
The poem deals with the contrast between the good and the bad sides of life which also is seen in “Mule killers”, because the protagonist discovers the beautiful thing of being in love, but he also discovers that it is not always possible to get what you want, which is not possible for him to deal with.

To conclude, the overall message of this short story is that you are responsible for your own life and that the decisions you make might affect your future. The short story puts a bad light on the traditional society because there is no room for mistakes. It is natural for human to make mistakes and therefore there should be space to make things right, so you do not have to live a life in guilt with hidden feelings like the protagonist does.

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