The Reality Of Happiness In Baboon, By Nina Marie Aidt

Although Denmark is the considered to be the happiest country in the world, contemporary artists and authors create works portraying the absurdities and ironies in the reality of that happiness. In 2006, Danish author Nina Marie Aidt released Baboon, a collection of short stories about life in Denmark. She often focuses on the brutal and often hidden aspects of life. Her stories pick up at a seemingly random point in a persons life and continue through the persons eyes revealing often uncomfortable sides of life. This particular selection of stories deal with three separate families ands uncovers the unsightly truth behind the complex veil of contentment. The concept of a happy childhood is highly individual. In the stories, the children’s emotions are shown only through experience. These events describe what life is like for a child in Denmark. This analysis will look at what can be determined about the children happiness through three of Nina Marie Aidt’s stories; first analyzing a how children are portrayed throughout the stories, then looking at their individual happiness describing the elements of a happy childhood. Bulbjerg is the first story. It is about a man, his wife Anne, and their
They crash at bottom of a hill and Sebastian is sent flying into a ditch. His head lands on a rock and is knocked unconscious. Again Anne becomes inactive “You’ve crawled into a thicket. You watch me with your light green eyes, while holding the dog by the leash.”(Aidt 7). After the narrator yells at her, Anne takes initiative and carries Sebastian while the narrator follows. Immediately after his sons injury the narrator reveals his affair to Anne. Sebastian is unconscious and does not hear the explicit fight. They continue walking, eventually Anne runs ahead to find a ride to the hospital. The narrator carries Sebastian who is regaining consciousness and it seems as though he makes a decision to be happy with his wife and