The stack

In life problems solved by confrontations is mandatory, no matter how hard you try to avoid them, sooner or later they will catch up, and stacking them instead of confronting them, will only make the problems bigger. Don’t wait for others to do your dishes take responsibility. That is among other things what Rose Tremain writes about in the short story ”The stack”, which was written and published in 2000.

The story is told by an 3. Person omniscient narrator bound to John McCreedy.
The main theme in the story is family problems that we can see, because the story is about a family that doesn’t function. The communication is bad, and the tone is hard between the members, they don’t like talking to each other and you get the …show more content…

The symbol that the whole story treat of is the stack of plates that McCreedy makes at the end of the story, and on top there is a half eaten steak. McCreedy takes the meat up and lets it dangle above the stack. The meat symbolizes McCreedy’s state of mind and the plates the problems that he has build up. The family don’t understand his way of expressing, and Katy fears for her father to swipe the plates off the table. But Spiros comes and make a waiter remove the stack, avoiding a confrontation.
Spiros plays a big part in the story. McCreedy considers him as a dear friend and can relate to him and looks up to him. Spiro is from Italy, also fare away from home, but he has made it work or rather he has fought to make it work. The ting with Spiros, is that he also has an depressed wife, who have had hard fitting in, in another country. Spiro is representing the fact, that McCreedy isn’t miserable because he is far from home, he is miserable because he has given up, and don’t even try to make a good life.
Another accession of Spiros is: Spiro means spirit, and symbolizes the spirit of McCreedy, the part of him that wants to make his life in London work. Spiros is McCreedys guardian angel.
The story reaches its climax, as McCreedy have stacked the plates, and you think a confrontation is going to take place. But as Spiro swoops in, the climax fad out, leaving the reader