Someone Had To by Janice Galloway
Janice Galloway's short story 'Someone Had To' is a truly disturbing insight into the mind of a man engaged in violently abusing his stepdaughter. Through her effective use of narrative stance, structure, imagery and characterisation, we are allowed to see this pessimistic theme in an all too convincing way.
The story is told from the point of view of Frank, Kimberly's stepfather. His portrayal . Through the use of first person narrative, we are effectively allowed to see Frank's opinions on Kimberly without much intervention from any other characters. We do see the occasional input from Kimberly's mother, Linda, but her intervention in slight.
To begin…show more content…
We see Frank trying to portray himself as reasonable: 'I'm not an unreasonable man. I argued' However, by his decision to 'argue' the point, we see, in fact, that it is not a 'reasonable' thing to do. A reasonable person does not argue - they discuss or debate on an issue. We see Frank's reaction to what is perceived as Kimberley's bad behaviour. Our first sign of his disciplining is when he tells the reader: 'I only hit her when she's naughty'. That seems an incongruous statement, as you would not normally call a teenager 'naughty'. He seems to be taking the punishment too far when he tells the reader: 'She'll come round QUICKLY ENOUGH WHEN SHE'S HUNGRY' ==================================================== This seems a draconian thing to do. To begin with, we can still somewhat sympathise, although we recognise that he may be pushed beyond his limits. His next punishment begins to show how unreasonable he actually is. When he puts Kimberley in the corner, all she does is 'just stood there'. Frank's expression is one of despair but the reader is beginning to wonder what else he expected her to do. She is simply doing what he told her to do and he is finding fault with that. We are beginning to see that Frank is not necessarily the man we originally thought he was. His next punishment is where we really start to see him lose control. He
We see Frank trying to portray himself as reasonable: 'I'm not an unreasonable man. I argued' However, by his decision to 'argue' the point, we see, in fact, that it is not a 'reasonable' thing to do. A reasonable person does not argue - they discuss or debate on an issue. We see Frank's reaction to what is perceived as Kimberley's bad behaviour. Our first sign of his disciplining is when he tells the reader: 'I only hit her when she's naughty'. That seems an incongruous statement, as you would not normally call a teenager 'naughty'. He seems to be taking the punishment too far when he tells the reader: 'She'll come round QUICKLY ENOUGH WHEN SHE'S HUNGRY' ==================================================== This seems a draconian thing to do. To begin with, we can still somewhat sympathise, although we recognise that he may be pushed beyond his limits. His next punishment begins to show how unreasonable he actually is. When he puts Kimberley in the corner, all she does is 'just stood there'. Frank's expression is one of despair but the reader is beginning to wonder what else he expected her to do. She is simply doing what he told her to do and he is finding fault with that. We are beginning to see that Frank is not necessarily the man we originally thought he was. His next punishment is where we really start to see him lose control. He
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