Analyse af Catherine Moffats novelle 'Better Homes and Gardens'

The story “Better Homes and Gardens” is written by Catherine Moffat, who is an author and works as a librarian at the University of Newcastle, she writes stories where the themes mostly are: crime and/or speculative fiction, and many of her stories also have a social justice theme. The text “Better Homes and Gardens” was published in 2016 in the anthology “Hope Anthology”. It is in the genre short story, and it deals with people on the fringes of society, apart from that the text also contains the theme hope, and therefore in this essay I am going to cover the subjects of narration, the point of view, setting, characters, composition, themes, and messages.

The text does not tell us that the family is homeless, but based on how they live and their way of life, you can come to the conclusion that they are, in fact, homeless, for example “After dinner Dad makes us go to the toilet and clean our teeth in the park toilets and then we drive around for a bit. We stop the car and Dad puts Grace to sleep in the back seat and then we sit and listen to the 30 radio for a while and then it's my turn to go to bed.” page 1, line 28-30. Our narrator is a boy in his pre-teens, we can tell that by the way he wonders about, what others think of him, for instance: “It's getting hard to keep pretending I know about the latest games or what's on YouTube and I've grown so much my school shirt is too tight under the arms.” page 3, line 84-86. The boy is unnamed and only refers to himself as: I, us, and we. He is a first-person narrator and we experience the story through his eyes and ears, and because of that this story is very subjective: “I sleep head to tail with Grace in the back seat” page 1, line 35. The boy seems very mature for his age, especially towards his younger sister, he is a protective older brother: “I hold tight to Grace's hand - It's my job to see she's safe.” page 1, line 2-3. He cares a lot about Graces happiness, and is creating this kind of bubble around her, so nothing can cause her any harm psychologically, this creates a safe environment for his sister, while their father is gone. Grace is still a child and therefore she does not fully understand the situation she and her family are in, although she is a very happy and cheerful child. The children’s father seems to be a very happy and satisfied man, he always waits for them after school, and takes them to the beach every day, but it could also be due to the fact that they live in a car, and therefore cannot shower in any other way: “After a swim, we do some more beach runs and then into the showers. Only one of the showers works properly so we have to take turns. We push the button and jump under the water and try to wash before 15 the hot water runs out. Dad showed us how to rub sand on our body instead of soap to get the dirt off.” page 1, line 13-15. Every night they drive to a new place, and the father has taught the children that if a police officer ever asks them where they are headed, they are on the way to their grandparents in Queensland. One day the children’s father disappears and is not by the school to pick them up. Because of the open ending, we will never know why he has gone, but the children remain hopeful till the very end.