Happy Birthday Essay

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Happy Birthday, 1951 ”Happy Birthday” is a short story about a 7-year-old boy, who lives with an old man. They live in a secluded house, or in the ruins of a former house. There has recently been a war where they live, and the little boy is very fascinated by the soldiers, their weapons and their machinery. The two of them have never celebrated the boy’s birthday, as neither of them know when he was born, and they choose a day. On his newly chosen birthday the boy is given a truck – or a tank as he calls it. For a birthday present, the old man wants to show the boy a special place in the woods. Unfortunately the boy does not appreciate the place. He is only thinking of the military tank they passed on their way to the special place. They take a rest and when the old man wakes up, the boy is gone. He looks for him and finds him in the derelict tank, where he pretends to be a soldier and “shoots” the old man. The old man has been taking care of the boy ever since he was handled over to him when the war ended (p. 7, l. 26 – 28). He is trying to raise the boy the best he can, and he gets fru-strated when the boy shows so much interest in the soldiers. An example is on page 8, line 56 – 70, where the old man has just given the boy his present. The boy wants it to be a tank, even though the old man made it as a truck. When the boy keeps saying it is a tank, he is not allowed to take it with him on the trip – this is how much the old man detests soldiers, weapons and war. When they see the truck in the woods, the old man says that the boy is not allowed to play with it, and he holds his hand very tightly (p. 9, l. 113). It is difficult for the old man to see how fascinated the boy is by sol-diers, as he hates them so much. The boy is the old man’s responsibility, and when the boy is so interested in war, the old man feels that he has failed. The boy is, as you can
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