Analyse af novellen 'The Death of Tommy Grimes'

Do you know that feeling, when you have to do a certain thing, to be seen by the ones you love?

Tommy and his father, Pa, do Trophy hunting. The interesting part of this short story is that Pa keeps pressuring Tommy to hunt and kill an animal or maybe even a human too so that Tommy can become a man and he would see pride in Pa’s eyes.

Tommy’s appearance reveals that he is a white twelve-year-old American boy who lives in the state Mississippi.

He has “light brown hair” and blue eyes.

Tommy is a dynamic character because through this short story; Tommy develops from an innocent boy to a young adult.

Tommy’s good qualities is that he has his innocence, that is not necessarily bad. Nevertheless, in order for his father to actually accept him and see him as a “man”. He had to kill someone. Not just someone actually an African American.

The short story takes place somewhere in the state of Mississippi. It was written in 1962, which is one year before Martin Luther King Jr’s speech in 1963.

I would guess the season in this story is spring, there’s sunshine but at the same time there’s also some mist. The time stretches over one day. In the morning, they go out hunting till in the evening where Tommy and Pa goes to the bar. The social circumstances in this short story is virtually about racism and that even after slavery got abolished, perhaps there was still racism going on in most of the states.