What Do We Learn About Tomas in the Opening Chapter, “My Swordhand Is Singing”

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Jac Nelligan. 3UL. What do we learn about Tomas in the opening chapter, “My Swordhand Is Singing”. In the opening chapter to the story, “My Swordhand Is Singing” the author introduces Tomas. The author uses many phrases and describes peters father very cunningly by weaving in his physical description in along with his disabilities in chapter 2. The author justifies that peters dad, Tomas is a drunken woodcutter who normally reeks of slivovitz, a Russian beer and alcohol. This is evident when Tomas’ son Peter smells his way to his dad as he is running towards him in the forest: “through the cold, peter could smell his father; even the biting wind could not rid him of the constant reek of slivovitz and beer”. The evidence that I have found leads me to the conclusion that Tomas is usually drunk and smells of alcohol. The author uses the word “reek” instead of “smells of” because the stench that peter smells is not a nice smell. Later on the author also uses the phrase: “... cannot rid the stench” which also means that Tomas must always smell like this. As well as not bothering to impress his son with his stench of alcohol, I also think that Tomas does not want his son as he does not care for him in the way that most fathers would. He ignores his son and sometimes pretends to think that he is not there: “thanks to his taciturn father, most conversations Peter had taken place were in his own head”. This leads me to decide that Tomas is maybe an only Father and that peters mother may have died when he was young and Tomas was palmed off with him. Also I have noticed that Tomas drinks a lot of alcohol. I think that Tomas drinks so much that he does not have time for his son. Therefore Tomas does not look after his son properly and may end up neglecting him one day, or maybe die of too much alcohol intake. Although we know that Tomas drinks, we automatically think

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