As a child, you experience the world and your parents through a way more awestruck perspective, which is incomparable to the way adults see it. This can lead to a lot of misunderstandings between a child and its parents. This is illustrated in the short story “Compass and Torch” by Elizabeth Baines. In my assignment I will figure out how this manifest itself on the relationship between the boy and his father.
The story has a third-person narrator seen through the perspective of the boy, whose name we do not get familiar with. It seems that the parents of the boy have been separated for a year, and the boy now gets to see his dad again for the first time since. His father has planned a father-son trip with a sleepover with the purpose of having some quality time with his son. This goes wrong because of them being way too disparate.
This incompatibility seems to be caused the anxiety of the both of them. The boy has not seen his dad in a while and is clearly nervous. This is expressed by all the trivial questions he keeps asking his dad: “do you think that horse wanted something to eat?” (L.148). His dad seems to be affected by the nervousness of his son. He misunderstands it and is ashamed that it might have been caused by him not having spent enough time with him during and after the separation. This uneasiness of the father, caused by the behavior of the son, is clearly expressed in the text “He is looking away, seared by the glitter of anxiety in his little boy’s eyes.” (L. 46).
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