Short Stories

"Not Liking to Pass the Road Again" is a brief (barely more than 2 pages), puzzling story. This is the first short story told in the first person, but the narrator is not otherwise named, though he seems to be a young boy. The story begins with a description of a road with a wood next to it that the narrator used to pass by. The wood "for a long time ... had been the place of the Scotch brothers. They were maniacs, carpenters by trade, Baptists; and one had done something horrible to his brother." (p.35) The narrator believed that only one still lived in the woods. When the narrator passed by, he used to throw things into it: small things at first, but one day he throws in "two old chisels without handles" (p.35); the first "gashe[s] a young tree ... tak[ing] the green bark clean from the white wood" (p.35).

The narrator had "purposely this bold day prepared, to throw them in with desperate malice" (pp. 35-36). The second chisel is thrown and "oh God the great bursting crashing in the wood and he came, brutal grunting with speed" (p.36). Who or what the "he" is isn't clear. The narrator runs off as quickly as he can uphill over the trail, then into the stream near a bridge, and he climbs up to near the culvert on the road, and he looks back at his pursuer, and sees "It was still down there [note the pursuer is now "it", rather than "he"], casting to and fro like a hound, but with inconceivable rapidity. Halfway up the meadow sometimes to hit back on the line, so eager, then a silent rush to the water's edge and a check as if it had run into a stone wall: then over and over again, the eager ceasless tracing back and fro." (p.36) The narrator gets to his house and changes his boots without being seen, then he imagines his mother coming in and warning him of a mad dog. "'Hugh was found on the old bridge,' she said (Hugh was one of the farm boys), 'at the foot of the old bridge, with his face bitten. They have taken him to hospital, but he will not speak yet.'" (p.37)

There are several interesting questions about this story. The most prominent is: what did he hit, and what was pursuing him? There are several possibilities (and I think PO'B is deliberately muddying the waters by introducing these possibilities). Susan Wenger and Scott Wilson, in their earlier posts, mentioned two of them. First, there's one (or both) of the Scotch brothers. This ties in with the commentary about them at the story's beginning, but the pursuer is described ("Vague (except in movement'), uncoloured, low on the ground" (p.36)) as what sounds like a non-human creature. The second possibility is that the creature really is a mad dog, and its advance is checked by the end of a leash, but there are difficulties with this explanation as well. Would it be described as "casting to and fro like a hound" if it really were a hound? In addition, it seems to have a very long leash if it can make it "halfway up the meadow" before reaching the end. There's also the possibility of a combination of the first two explanations: the Scotchman is hit, and his dog attacks. A third possibility is that the narrator has hit Hugh with the chisel, slashing his face, and the mad dog story is something he has made up to hide the knowledge of what he's done, but this has the same weaknesses as the Scotch brothers theory. A final possibility is that the creature is supernatural, perhaps the ghost of the dead Scotch brother, which would explain the tremendous speed, and perhaps the stopping at the water (aren't there supernatural creatures -- vampires, etc., -- that can't cross running water?), and the mad dog story is an attempt to put a natural explanation on things.

There's some interesting comparisons between this and the earlier stories. Going into the woods and a path have featured in all of them so far. We know less about the narrator than any of the other central characters so far. At least we knew that "the man" in "The Dawn Flighting" was a man; the narrator in "Not Liking" seems to be a boy, but the evidence is sparse. I assume that he is male because of his behavior in throwing things into the woods, and because the characters in the earlier stories were male, and because POB is himself male, but nowhere is this explicitly said. In fact, the "I" construction allows POB to avoid "he" or "she" altogether if he is trying to create a question on this point. Similarly, I assume the character is young, because he imagines his mother coming in, suggesting a child who lives with his parents, but if this part is imaginary, the narrator could actually be any age. Rather than being about a young boy, the story may be that of a young girl (parallels to Little Red Riding Hood?), or an older woman.

This story seems to have the most in common with "The Happy Despatch", particularly the offenses against something in the woods and the running away. Compare this from "Happy Despatch": "still the everlasting hill stretched above and beyond him ... On and on: not to look up: on, on, on" (p.26) to this from "Not Liking": "Running, running, running, and running up that that dreadful hill that pulled me back" (p.36)

Susan's idea of Hugh = You occurred to me as well, and suggests as whole different possibility of intrepreting the story as psychological metaphor, with Hugh as himself, the woods as his unconscious, and the creature as some dark secret or fear within.

A final interesting thing is the narrator's deliberate re-creation of the past at the story's end. This creates a sort of double memory -- a real past and an imagined one -- and, eventually, a real and an imagined identity, which if lived long enough, tend to get merged and confused. Characters with self-re-created identities are prominent in literature generally (e.g., The Great Gatsby), as well as in O'Brian's own later works, most completely with Richard Temple, but also with James Dillon, as well as Stephen Maturin, and, for that matter, all the intelligence agents we meet, to one degree or another.

John Finneran

From: Don Seltzer

I was somewhat annoyed by the structure of the story, which caused some confusion (deliberate?), forcing me to stop in the middle and backup a few paragraphs. When "he came, brutal grunting with speed", I of course thought it was the "maniacal Scotch brother". But further along, "It was still there, casting to and fro like a hound". Huh? Did I misread something? Only at the end is it clear to me that he was chased by a dog. And I also discover that the narrator is a boy, not a man as I had incorrectly assumed at the beginning. So I had to go back and read the whole story again from the new perspective.

Here's my interpretation. The narrator is a weak young boy who is bullied by the local farm boys, particularly one named Hugh. With low esteem, he responds by attacking someone he believes cannot strike back. He probably doesn't know the man, or have any particular grievance towards him. But the Scottish Baptist, subject of all of those dark rumors spread among boys, is a legimate target for his frustrations by virtue of being different from the local folk, and therefore inferior to even the weak boy.

His "attacks" are truly juvenile and petty, beginning as the flinging of twigs and pebbles in the general direction of the man's wood. The satisfaction he gets is all in his mind, as the man suffers no harm, and is ignorant of the boy's actions. Gradually, the boy musters enough courage to throw larger stones more boldly. There comes a day when the boy, with premeditation, brings some old chisels to maliciously throw into the woods, by far the boldest act he has attempted. Unexpectedly, a dog comes out to chase him. Afterwards, I am not sure if he feels proud for having done something dangerous and malicious, or ashamed for his fear when being chased by the dog. Perhaps a combination of both. He invents the little fiction about Hugh and the dog, deriving a satisfaction from the thought that he escaped the beast, while his hated bully did not.

Don Seltzer