Analyse af 'Sticks and Stones' om mobning

Sticks and stones by Trezza Azzopardi is a short story about a school teacher named Lewis, who witnesses a student named Paul Fry being bullied. Lewis was a victim of bullying as well, and he has been running away from it his entire life. He managed to survive and succeed in life, despite the adversity he has had. He falls in a deep depression, when Paul Fry is reminding him of his childhood and the bullying. Lewis tries to help Paul, but his attempts fail. Paul is found dead the day after. Lewis is offered to take some time off by the headmaster, and he decides to go back to live with his mother in his childhood home to face his inner demons.

Lewis is a school teacher, and has a girlfriend named Anna. He seems to run away from tough things in his life, until now. We hear a lot about his childhood and how he was bullied, but never did anything about it. To understand Lewis, we need to understand his childhood. In the story it’s told that his mother several times has said: if something goes wrong, runaway, escape. That is exactly what Lewis did, when he was bullied. Lewis seems like a strange character. He is obsessed with helping Paul Fry and watches him and writes down notes that he later gives to the headmaster, which for me seems like a strange thing to do. When Lewis decides to go back to his childhood home, it symbolizes that he was used to running away from his problems, but now returns and faces what he has always been afraid to face. The reality. Paul Fry is a big character in the story, because he gives the story an action. We don’t know who he is or how he is feeling; he is only seen from the outside, from the narrator's visual angle and from what Lewis is seeing.