Analyse af Astrid Blodgetts novelle 'Ice break'

Some say that family is all that you got. Family is the one bond that can never be broken. It is a bond for life. Doesn’t matter if it’s a bond between mothers and daughters, fathers and sons or brothers and sisters. But what happens when those bond slowly decades into nothing? The short story, Ice break, by Astrid Blodgett handles that theme. Ice break explores the theme of family dysfunctionality and from the narrator, Dawn’s, first-person point of view, it takes the reader on a journey to the lake, which might be the last of their family’s bond.

The main themes of the short story are marital problems and dysfuntionality within a family. First of all, the main character’s parent’s marriage is in jeopardy, which creates tension in the whole family. The marital problems is presented to the reader, when Marla tells Dawn and Janie about Mr. and Mrs. Pichowsky’s divorce: “Marla must mean that Mom and dad were going to be like Mr. and Mrs. Pichowsky. Marla was just being cruel.” (ll. 73-74). It informs the reader about the tension within Dawn’s parent’s marriage. Furthermore, taking into the fact that their marriage is full of despair and tension, the following quote only enhances the anxiety of the marriage: “Now she said, ‘I know how much you love it’”. (l. 17) The mom hints at a loveless marriage and tells the husband to go do what he loves, because at least he should have that. Secondly, the friction in the marriage serves only to dysfunction the family. The family is divided and does not spend time with each other, probably because of the way their marriage is developing. Take for instance the following quote: “Mom said no. She always said no. She was doing some work, some financial stuff she needed to catch up on.” (ll. 12-13). This also shows how Dawn feels subsided and does not feel her mother wants to spend time with her. That is perhaps not the case. Mom and dad have decided to do an arrangement, where they never have to be together: “Sometime they did that, one parent, one child.” (l. 23). They’d come up with a method, in which they never have to be together. This emphasizes the point that their marriage is developing towards a divorce. The marriage has left Dawn and her sister’s dad in an unpredictable state of mind.