Analysis of Astrid Blodgett's short story 'Ice Break'

Life is difficult. There are choices to make, things to understand, people to love and so much more. As a child, the most important things in life can sometimes be hard to understand, good or bad. Therefore, a life threatening and traumatizing experience will not always affect children the same way, as if they were more mature and old enough to understand the true meaning and consequences of an accident. Ice Break is a short story written by Astrid Blodgett. The story is told in a first person narrator and is from the main character Dawn's perspective. Dawn are at a ice fishing trip with her dad and her younger sister when the car falls into the water and her dad tries to safe them.

‘Ice Break’ is told by a first person narrator, Dawn, where we see the story from her point of?view. Dawn is approximately 12 years old, since she has just started working as a babysitter and thinks that five dollars is a lot of money. Since Dawn is such a young main character, she is more reliable as a narrator, because children almost always tell the truth. She lives with her parents and her two siblings, the older sister Marla and the younger sister Janie. Dawn has an awkward relationship with her father: “I didn?t want to be alone with Dad. (...) we both ended up saying all the wrong things”. So when Dawn is forced to go with her dad on a fishing trip, she persuades Janie to join them by giving her a 5 dollar bill. On the trip, they are looking for their Uncle Rick, but suddenly the ice underneath the truck breaks, which leads to the father and Janie drowning, but Dawn was miraculously saved by her father before he died.