Genre
Adult Fiction
Setting and Context
Set in the suburbs
Narrator and Point of View
It is narrated in the second person from Morris Magellan’s point of view.
Tone and Mood
Haunting, Playful, Self-deprecating, Foreboding
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is Morris Magellan and the antagonist is alcoholism.
Major Conflict
The story follows an alcoholic middle-aged man as he falls victim to his impulses that become destructive. His domestic life and work-life suffer from his helplessness to drinking alcohol and causing havoc.
Climax
The climax reaches when Mary’s voice screams for Morris to stop the car.
Foreshadowing
The death of the father in the opening foreshadows the unresolved grief that fuels the protagonist’s substance abuse.
Understatement
The narrator understates his powerlessness to drink alcohol by expressing a false sense of control.
Allusions
The narrative alludes to alcoholism and its destructive ability to trap the sufferer in a never-ending cycle of drinking.
Imagery
“After a short walk you stopped on the slope of the hill. The rug was spread on the grass. Your mother unpacked the basket and then began laying out sandwiches, a tea-flask, lemonade and some fruit, while your father smoked a cigarette. The hill overlooked the main road, and after a few minutes you asked if you could go and play with the toy car and caravan parked in the layby below.”
Paradox
“For you, alcohol is not the problem – it’s the solution: dissolving all the separate parts into one. A universal solvent. An ocean.”
Parallelism
“…there are only two places in the world: where there is a drink, and where there isn’t. Somewhere – and nowhere. But you know where you are with it. You know it will get you through. You know when to stop. No slurring and falling over for you. You know exactly what you’re doing: enough, or too much.”
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“Remember the Holy Book”
Personification
“First light was piercing you through with joy, hope.”
