'Our Nicky's Heart', analyse af Graham Swifts novelle

Making an ethical decision, whether or not it can save lives or not, is challenging. You keep thinking is it okay or not. In this case, we are front row. In Graham swift's short story "Our Nicky's Heart", we get to know how terrifying and tough the loss of a family member can be and the dilemma they are faced with shortly after the news was breaking about Nicky's death. You can be faced with every bit of emotion in your body and the world is crumbling around you in just split seconds. How each character grows with their emotions and how the loss gets processed individually. In the short story, we get to know, how the Randall family cope with the loss of a beloved family member and the opportunity to donate Nicky's heart into a living person, can be tough and overwhelming.

We get acquainted with the Randall family that consists of Frank, the father, the mother, Mark, Nicky and also Michael and Eddie. The family is very traditional and is living in the countryside in England along with 400 acres of land, that Frank owns. In the story, we get the impression that the mother loves Nicky more and the other children and that is not without reason. When the mother was pregnant with Nicky, she so hoped it was going to be a girl to have the perfect balance in the family. The mother had so high hopes that she even called the foster Sally before she eventually what the gender was. Because of the early love to Nicky, he was treated differently than the others. He was spoiled and had bigger boundaries, compared to the 3 other kids in the family. The mother is just overall more emotionally attached to Nicky and vice versa Nicky loved his mother and preferred her presence. At seventeen Nicky got permission to purchase a Yamaha. That later in the short story gets quite ironic, because the Yamaha gets Nicky killed, but the mother did everything for Nicky. "Michael and Eddie would never have been allowed to do this, nor would I if I'd wanted, but with Nicky, it was somehow all right. Somehow it went with Nicky. Mum would have hated stopping him having his way – he could twist her around his finger." (page 107, ll. 16-21).