The Skating Party Analysis

Do you ever really know when you will come face to face with a struggle? No, of course not. If you knew you would avoid facing them all together. In fact, given the choice between facing their own hardship or seeing someone else face their’s, no matter how noble an individual you claim to be, you would choose the latter. The Skating Party is a story that depicted a man’s struggles throughout life, seen through his fifteen year old niece, Maida. When faced with a dilema the character Nathan Singleton has to choose between his fiance or the woman he loves, in a battle against time where he can only save one sister. Nathan 's choice between careers plagued him throughout his life as well as, the dismantlement of a stone man which once lay on

In “The Skating Party” the author Merna Summers, presents the different ways people deal with struggles, depicted through the character Nathan Singleton, who faces hardships with his love, occupation and the removal of the stone

Do former soldiers feel remorse for the people they hurt, even if it wasn’t their fault? We feel guilty for things that weren’t necessarily our fault. Summers’ talks about a man made of stone that use to lie on the hill near the farm in which the Singleton’s live. Nathan was asked to move the man, many years ago a decision that still haunts him: “I felt guilty… that I was just doing what was expected of me”. Why is doing something that is expected of us make us feel remorse? Let’s put it this way, if someone told you to hurt someone or they would hurt you, you would probably do it, but you would still feel horrible. Why you feel this way is because you have still done something you think it wrong. Nathan believes that the movement of the stone man was wrong and was something he shouldn 't have done. Yet, not everyone saw the stone man in this light. Nathan’s father wanted the land for farming wheat, and as Nathan states: “it was a case of wheat or stone. And he chose wheat”. Nathan’s father made the decision which Nathan saw through. It is not the struggle between choosing stone or wheat that caused hardship for Nathan, as that decision was made for him. It was the struggle with his guilt, a response to doing something he regrets. The stone and the wheat could represent anything in life, as you have one that is almost always dependable and something you can rely on. The other being the