Guilt and mental illness in Hilary Taylor's 'Sea Defences'

Guilt is one of the strongest feelings a human can feel. Guilt can cause a person to do wild and crazy thing, and many people cope with guilt in their own, different ways. Guilt is a very fascinating emotion, it has the power to affect us throughout the rest of our lives, it can haunt us and be the only thing on our mind. The feeling of guilt is the main explored theme in the short story “Sea Defences” (2018) by Hilary Taylor. The theme is explored through the main character Michael and focuses on how he copes with a lot of guilt, even though it was not his fault.

The short story is told from a first-person narrator, the story’s protagonist Michael. Many things in the text hint that Michael has a mental illness, which makes him an unreliable first-person narrator. Michael doesn’t understand the wrong in watching children the way that he does, his lack of understanding when it comes to being social and social norms causes him to get in trouble and end up at the police station. The narrator is also unaware of the consequences of hiding Hannah’s shoe after her death, which again adds him not knowing wrong from right. With Michael being an unreliable narrator, we as readers become more and more suspicious about him throughout the story, because he only gives us fragments of what has happened. “Oh, Michael,” she said. “What have you done?” […] But it was my fault” (p.1 ll.13-15). For the most part of the story, we only know that something horrible happened to Hannah, and that Michael somehow had something to do with it, and we even begin to question if he had killed her. So, in the end it is a relief to know that it was an accident and not intentional.