”And before you even open your mouth, he’s stepping forward and thanking you for your help – the man shaking your hand, saying how pleased, how grateful, how proud, how difficult it must have been – but his tone’s all wrong, all shaky”.
The quotation above is from the short story: “Stolpestad”, written by William Lychack. The quotation is a perfect example of how the whole short story is told by a 2nd Person narrator, who tells the main character, a police officer in town, what he is doing, when he is doing it. Almost as if the police officer is talking to himself in his own head, telling his body how to act. Then you do this next you do that. This point of view, the chosen narrator, gives the whole story another side to it. Who is the narrator and how does it affect the view on the main character?
The main character is a middle-aged guy, a police officer, who basically hates his life. His life has become trivial in every way, not only in his job but also at home. He spends his day at the office or in his police car, waiting to get done with it. When his shift is finally over, he has no desire of getting back home. Instead he makes bad excuses to be late, so he can go to the same bar one night after another. This is described in the story when he, after helping a family with a suffering dog, calls his wife to say he is late, and then goes to the bar. The most absurd moment occurs shortly after when his wife calls him at the bar, when there is suddenly someone asking for him at home. Clearly, she knows that he is simply making these excuses and tries to avoid getting back home. It is nearly tragicomic how this relationship somehow manages to stay together, when obviously neither part show any interest in the partners company.
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