The Loons

A detailed Summary of The Loons

In Short stories and other types of written work, we encounter specific problems of understanding and interpretation. From Vanessa in "The Loons", to the son in "Borders" and the mother in "I Stand Here Ironing", the first person narrative viewpoint exposes a great deal about the narrator, the Characters and circumstances.

We cannot count on the first person point of view because they are not aware of what the other characters are thinking. The mother in Tillie Olsen's story says it herself, she does not know her daughter: " She has lived for nineteen years. There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me (p. 576)." As she goes on and explains how she's been remotely away in the young girls life we can feel that she does not know what Emily feels or think. She feels guilty of not being there for her daughter when she needed her most, when Emily use to ask how beautiful she had been and would be. The mother did not think Emily was beautiful but answered that she was ' now to the seeing eyes', eyes that were nonexistent. She was not there to make Emily feel better about herself.

If they are not omniscient they cannot inform us (the readers) about what is happening in the passage. When the

In first narrative viewpoint stories, we come across many difficulties to the understanding of the story. The narrator is unreliable like the mother in "I Stand Here Ironing", is unaware of the situation like the son in the story "Borders" or the narrator has false interpretations of the other characters like Vanessa and Piquette. Now we shall not assume that first person narrative point of view is bad. It is just a way of making the story puzzling and mysterious.

Ť It seemed to me that Piquette must be in some way a daughter of the forest, a kind of junior prophetess of the wilds who might impart to me...ť (P.391, The Loons) In Margaret Laurence's Story, Vanessa thinks that because Piquette comes from a native family and looks like a native, that she really is a native. In a third person narrative point of view we would be getting Piquette's opinion and we would be able to make our own judgement because we would have more than one version of the story. Here we only have what Vanessa is feeling; she thinks that native people are flexible, calm, and peaceful and that they communicate with animals as well as nature and belongs to the land. She even finds it offending that Piquette is not interes

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Approximate Word count = 821
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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The Loons

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