Losing your relationship to your dad is very rough and nobody wants to make that experience. In the short story Compass and Torch from Elizabeth Baines that was published in 2003. The story is about a son and a fathers relationship. While they are on a camping trip the sons desire is to be united with his dad again, so they have a good relationship again. In this analytical essay, I want to focus on the most important symbols, do a characterization of the father, look at the relationship between the son and the father and interpret the short story.
The horses are an important but not so clear symbol. The horse signifies the lack of love that it tries to show but the son and the father just ignores. They show the …show more content…
The only few things we know about him are that he's 8 years old and he hasn't seen his dad for 4 months. To know more about the dad we do have to read between the lines. The boy likes his father more than this stepfather Jim. He's amazed by everything he does, like for example when the father opens the gate. Baines calls it " the essence of Madness " (ll 8-9 ). That's the first impression we get from the relationship between the son and his father. As the story proceeds, we see that the son is finding apologize for that his father doesn't really is showing interest in him. The father's disinterest is quite obvious. When the boy tries to show his torch to his dad (ll 36 f ) and he doesn't look back to see if his son can hold on with him (ll 135 f ).
It is really clear that the relationship between the son and the father is very bad. There is almost no relationship between both of them. There isn't much of a conversation between them, even though the son tries to get a conversation going. Although the son is proud of his father is he also disappointed of him. With the symbolism of the horse is that a comparison to the relationship to his father. Baines uses the symbols in the title to categorize the son and the father. Primarily the