Spilled Salt Intrepretaion
The short story ‘Spilled Salt’ is about a mother, called Myrna, whose son, Kenny, has been convicted to go to prison, then he comes back one day, and she does not know how to react about his homecoming. Myrna starts wondering how it all started and why she does not want to see her son anymore. She ends up deciding that she does not want to see Kenny again, and packs her stuff to go away for a week, and leaves a note behind for Kenny, saying that she does not want to see him again, and she wants, him gone, when she comes back.
The short story has a 3rd person narrator, you can see that, because the narrator does not say “I did” and phrases like that. The narrator is also unlimited, meaning that he/she can move insight all the characters heads unlimitedly, although we practically only hear Myrna’s thoughts and her feelings. The short story is narrated in past tense. You can see that on the verbs, there are no verbs that are in present form, only verbs in past tense, except for direct speech. The short story takes place in America. In the ‘present’ in the short story you are in Myrna’s apartment, you do not read about her leaving the apartment in the time where we ‘follow’ her. In the ‘past’ in the short story, Myrna lived with her husband, Buddy, and Kenny in a neighbourhood in the town she lives in at the ‘present’. But she moved away from Buddy when Kenny had just turned six. Then when Kenny went to jail, Myrna moved again, into an apartment. The short story stretches over a couple of days, because we start with hearing about Kenny coming home, at some point of the day he then leaves, to go check out the old neighbourhood, it becomes evening when he gets back. The next morning Kenny brings Myrna breakfast, she then decides to stay in bed for the day, and in the evening on the second day she packs up her suitcase. You read some flashbacks of Myrna’s in the short story, or you could also just call them memories. Because when Kenny comes home, it starts a chain
The short story has a 3rd person narrator, you can see that, because the narrator does not say “I did” and phrases like that. The narrator is also unlimited, meaning that he/she can move insight all the characters heads unlimitedly, although we practically only hear Myrna’s thoughts and her feelings. The short story is narrated in past tense. You can see that on the verbs, there are no verbs that are in present form, only verbs in past tense, except for direct speech. The short story takes place in America. In the ‘present’ in the short story you are in Myrna’s apartment, you do not read about her leaving the apartment in the time where we ‘follow’ her. In the ‘past’ in the short story, Myrna lived with her husband, Buddy, and Kenny in a neighbourhood in the town she lives in at the ‘present’. But she moved away from Buddy when Kenny had just turned six. Then when Kenny went to jail, Myrna moved again, into an apartment. The short story stretches over a couple of days, because we start with hearing about Kenny coming home, at some point of the day he then leaves, to go check out the old neighbourhood, it becomes evening when he gets back. The next morning Kenny brings Myrna breakfast, she then decides to stay in bed for the day, and in the evening on the second day she packs up her suitcase. You read some flashbacks of Myrna’s in the short story, or you could also just call them memories. Because when Kenny comes home, it starts a chain