Analyse af Eowyn Iveys novelle 'As the Time Draws Near'

In one way or another, we are all going to die someday. This is a fact that we all are aware of. Death is for many people a big taboo subject and how we comprehend death, is widely different from person to person. The short story As the Time Draws Near written by Eowyn Ivey is from 2012 and tells us a story about a young woman who has lost both her mother and father. In the short story we meet this young woman Piper Robertson as main character, who is about to fulfill her father’s last wish. Piper’s father recently died in a flight accident and now it is her duty to fulfill his last wish.

The short story is written in past tense with an unknown 3rd person narrator, bound to the main character. Therefore the readers will experience everything through the eyes of Piper. Piper who is, as I said, also the main character begins the story by telling us the many ways to die that life hands us. She gives examples of numerous incidents where people either have been killed in or by the nature that we live in. “A drunken man wanders from his village in the night and freezes to death alone on the tundra.”(ll. 2-3). After this passage the real story is about to begin. The story takes place in two different places – in an airplane on the way to Alaska and at a house in Alaska. This house is owned by a man called Ernest Tuttle and is also the place where Piper is expected to scatter her father’s ashes. This can be seen in this quotation, her fathers will. “I, Red Robertson, leave everything I have to my daughter, Piper Robertson. I want her to cremate me and take my ashes out to Ernest Tuttle’s place and spread them beneath the spruce tree. He’ll know which one.”(ll.41-43) Piper is with no parents. Her father recently died in a flight accident, and her mother also passed away when Piper was only three years old. Piper’s father, Red Robertson doesn’t appear in the short story, but solely through the portrayal in Piper’s and Tuttle’s memories. The first thing you get to know about Piper’s father is that he is one of those people who “falls out of the sky”. (l. 10). He always lived life like if he was in an adventure, and he always took the most reckless risks. “How long could a daredevil like her father survive when there were so many ways to die?” (ll. 14-15). This indicates his more or less hazardous life. You can connect the setting and Red’s outlook on life. The tundra in Alaska is also described as an adventure that never ends. Alaska’s wilderness was one of the things her father really did appreciate. Even though he had seen the many bull caribou far below in the Alaska tundra several times, he would still shake his head in disbelief. Piper has a hard time accepting the meaning of how her father lived his life. When Piper meets Tuttle, Tuttle tells her that he knows Red was not the settling-down kind of guy, but if he was, this place where Piper was told to spread out his ashes, would have been the place her father would have called home. Furthermore, Tuttle also tells her that her father loved her and her mother more than anything in life. However, this seems very unintelligible for Piper, given that he constantly was living on the edge of live and always was willing to risk his life. From our perspective, daughter and father got quite different outlooks on life. When Piper is at Ernest Tuttle’s place in Alaska, you quickly sense that she doesn’t feel safe and actually dreads the place, whereas her father who according to Tuttle would have called it home if things were different. He makes the most out of the harsh environment and is not afraid to take risks. The short story spreads over one day and takes place in daytime. There is no specific introduction to the story. It begins in media res, when Piper tells us about the different deaths life gives us. The story is chronological, but there are also some flashbacks that occur from the memories of Piper and Tuttle. The bear can be seen as a symbol of Piper’s father’s way of living life - fearless and dangerous. “I’ll bet your dad always told you if you’ve got a black bear after you, you don’t go running and shrieking.”(l. 122). As Ernest Tuttle portrays it, Red Robertson would never be afraid of a bear, he would simply act like one himself. The main theme in this short story is death, because the whole story is about how a young woman reacts when one of her dearest passes away. Piper fears death and now has to deal with her father’s death. Even though she had been expecting it to happen, it is very upsetting for her and she mostly seem angry with her father, and consider him as hot-headed. Piper is obviously focused on ways to avoid death, and her father Red was at the quite opposite pole of this outlook on life. To conclude, “As the Time Draws Near” is a story about a girl who recently lost her father who lived a widely different and more dangerous life than herself. After his death Piper is expected to complete her father’s last wishes, which she also intends to do. But still, there is something she isn’t fully mellowed with. She still can’t understand and respect her father and his way of living life, and that is for Piper a big frustration.