no angel

Losing a family member is one of the hardest, most life chancing experiences we go through. At one point or another it will happened to everyone. It’s an inevitable part of life. Death is an extremely hard concept to understand and accept. The finality of it, knowing that the person you have lost will never be there again. You want to remember those lost ones. To never forget them, but you also have to move on with life. That’s the dilemma most people face – wanting to hold on to their lost loved ones and then not being able to move on. Moving on and letting go are the themes in Bernie McGill’s short story no angel, about a woman who looks back at the people she has lost, and in the end she is finally able to accept it and move on.

The story is written in a first person narrator. The narrator is a woman named Annie. She has gone through the loss of her brother and mother, and is currently grieving her father who recently past away. Everything is seen from the narrator’s point of view. Because it is a first person narrator the narration is limited, since everything is seen and heard through the narrators thought and emotions and therefore not objective and reliable. The first person narration has an emotional effect on the reader, making the pain and trial of the narrator more relatable and real for the reader.

Annie is confused and trying to deal with her loss. She has dealt with loss before when her brother and mother died. She is a very thoughtful woman, who has a lot of compassion for her family. She cares a lot about what people think of her, and about being the kind of daughter her religious parents would be proud of, but at the same time she wants to be free and wild like her brother Robbie used to be, “Some of the time I...

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...aven or afterlife. She has accepted that they are gone for now, and that she has to live her own life from here on out, "I'll see you, then," I said. I could see his mouth move. "You know where we are" he said.."(p.5, l 185)

The main theme in the short story is loss and the loneliness and despair it brings. The main character is very lonely and trying to find a way back to her family by having these visions of her father. She has not accepted that he is gone, and she is in some way unconsciously trying to protect herself from the pain of being alone. She is in denial. McGill’s message is that the only way to move on from loss is to face it. You will not be able to move on until you accept what has happened. It takes time for Annie, but eventually she is able to let go and move on. Eventually time will heal all wound and ease the pain from the loss of a loved one.