Butcher Bird (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Wallace Stegner
- First Published: 1941
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: World War II era
- Setting: Saskatchewan, Canada
- Principal Characters: The boy, His father, His mother, Mr. Garfield
- Genres: Social realism, Short fiction
- Subjects: Parents and children, Class consciousness, Farms, farmers, or farming, Fathers, Death or dying, Canada or Canadians, Birds, Guns, Gifts
- Locales: Saskatchewan, Canada
The Story
The events of “Butcher Bird” take place during a single afternoon. A family sets out to visit their new neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Garfield. Mr. Garfield is an Englishman, whose talk of scientific farming methods and making the desert bloom has reached the family. The father clearly has no desire to visit them, but the mother wants to be neighborly, so they go.
The mother's and boy's experiences during this visit are vastly different from the father's. For the mother and her son, the Garfields’ home is a place of wonder, beauty, and discovery. There is a rug...
[The entire page is 1404 words long]
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