Analyse af novellen 'Abduction'

Abduction is a story about ambitions for one self and for others. Ann is a young woman, who early in life found her way to success. She was born in Manchester, a city not good enough for her. As soon as she could she escaped from the city and made the life she always wanted for herself in London. She became a paediatrician, who had no money problems and therefore was capable of giving her younger brother what she thought was a better life. Life could not be better for the young boy, living in London and getting all the money he needed. But the great expectations the sister had for him were difficult to live up to. Soon he is not able to escape the cling weep the sister created around him, and that ends up destroying him and his family in terms of alcoholism.

The narrator:

Abduction has a 1-person narrator, who never presents itself to us. The narrator is a brother or a sister of the two main characters. Even though it’s a 1-person narrator, “it” is able to see inside the mind of the younger brother in the end just before he dies. We know from the first line that the narrator is from Manchester and it is later given that Ann and her brother are from Manchester. And since the narrator wants to kill Ann and is telling the story about her life, we know that there is an acquaintance between them. We are given a little indication on the first page, that the narrator and the two main characters are siblings, as the line says: “He’d been born late in our parents’ marriage.” So we know that they share parents. At first, the start does not seem to fit with the rest of the story, as it is about how the narrator sits and waits on the train from Manchester to London, thinking about wanting to kill Ann. The rest of the story is about the life of Ann and the younger brother, and we hear nothing of the narrator in this part. But the two last lines of the first passage join the two stories together, as we are told that Ann kills with her money and proud attitude, and the story is about how Ann carries out her murder.