Analyse af novellen 'A good nights sleep'

In this short story the main character is Lockhart. Lockhart is a man living in a flat in Edinburgh. The building he lives in has a very hectic environment. Outside of the building there are car noises and the usual city life noises. The city life in Edinburgh is described as being very busy. But the city life in the part of Edinburgh Lockhart live in is not as loud and busy as it is in the center of the city. In the part of the city where the story takes place, taxis are squealing and doors are being slammed outside. Inside the building drunk people are running on the stairs, and junkies are sleeping in the hallway. Lockhart has just moved in and has troubles sleeping because of sustaining noises from his door. Lockhart’s life is troubled; he is (apparently) recently divorced. He is still thinking about his ex-wife though he does not want to. Lockhart and the ex-wife have a child too. He is wondering about what to do when his child comes to visit. Though Lockhart is a clever teacher in communication he is very troubled by his thoughts. He thinks that the new bed is worse than the old one; the double bed where he used to sleep with his wife. One late night someone knocks at Lockhart’s door. He goes out to check. It is a girl. We do not hear what the name of the girl are, we do get to hear though that she is homeless and have been sleeping in Lockhart’s hallway for a couple of days. She is described by Lockhart as having colorful shiny eyes, but this is kind of overshadowed by the fact that she wears trashy clothes. Where Lockhart is interested in the girl and her health, the girl is more arrogant and does not really care of herself. Lockhart finds it provocative that she does not have any interests for herself. This leads to a little discussion where the girl insists that she is fine. Lockhart asks her if she wants to sleep inside, she declines and Lockhart ends up locking the door. They are each others opposites. We do not hear much about the neighbors. They are called the new people so they have properly just recently moved in. After Lockhart has locked the door he goes back to bed. He has not been sleeping for long when he hears the girl again. This time she is coughing. He goes out to check but when he comes out one of the neighbors (the man) is standing in the hall. Lockhart mumbles a little. The neighbor takes over and says that he had just thrown a junkie out. After this Lockhart is a little stunned. He locks the door and goes inside. He still hears the girls’ voice in his head. He goes to bed and immediately fall a sleep. The ending is a little open in this short story. Lockhart fall a sleep and dreams about the noises that once again comes from the door. This properly indicates that he know that he made a mistake of locking the door on the girl. Because even though she said that she did not want to go inside with him, you have to keep talking with people in that situation. Lockhart is (as previously said) a communication teacher, this is the reason why he is more restless than others might be in a situation like this, because if someone are supposed to know something about people and communication, it will properly be a communication teacher. I believe that the theme in this short story is that everybody makes mistakes. The girl has chosen a lifestyle which is not regular. She has properly been making a stupid decision once and is now paying for it by living in the streets. George Lockhart makes the mistake of walking away from the girl when she might have needed him the most. He should have stayed and talked to the girl for a while. Even though she was difficult to talk to and was declining every idea Lockhart had, he should have held on. You can almost always solve everything by talking. If he had been with her for maybe five more minutes she might have been sleeping in the kids’ room, but she is forced by the neighbors to move away and out to the streets. That little mistake might haunt Lockhart for a while, everybody makes mistakes and when they are first made, it can be difficult to make up for them. The neighbors also made a mistake by throwing the girl out without talking to her first. It is that kind of ignorance towards other people that can lead to mistakes. If the neighbors had been listening to her, they might have find out that she was a girl in need of comfort, but they chose to throw her out.