Short Story 'The Stone Boy'

Essay to “The Stone Boy”

Death is something that awaits every living being. We are born, we die and between them, we live. Some die once they reach old age and wither away, whilst some people are murdered. Dying before one reaches the old age, can occur as an accident, although sometimes when someone dies young it is caused by murder, and where death appears, so does grief. Every person handles grief in a different way. Some might cry their heart out, whilst other do not cry, but feel an emptiness instead, and then there are some people that feel lost. They appear normal and untouched by the events, but on the inside, there is nothing but chaos and confusion. In the short story “The Stone Boy” written by Gina Berriault in 1988, the young boy Arnold brings a gun with him one early morning, when he and his older brother

When Eugene is dead, Arnold cannot accept that he killed his brother, and hence Arnold goes on to pick peas. It is not until he faces his parent back in the house that he openly accepts that Eugene is dead. Arnold who had an open personality before the accident, becomes withdrawn and quite in the aftermaths of Eugene’s death. It says, “If his parents never called him, he thought, he would stay up in the loft forever out of the way”

One would think that Arnold would lean on his parents to comfort him for what has happened, but instead Arnold tries to avoid them, because he feels as if he is only in the way for his parents, and this also brings one back to Arnold’s existential crisis. Arnold even tries to get out of the house so that he does not have to be near his parents, as it says, “If he went for the calf he’d be away from the farm all