Essay:
The short story Samphire, by Patrick O’Brian, is drama about a couple who go looking for Samphire on top of a cliff. The author uses shaping devices such as symbolism, characterization, how they speak, what they say, what they do, tone and point of view to position the reader to consider the character Lacey as childish, manipulative, domineering, insufferable and ignorant. The author also positions the reader to consider the character Molly as passive, unconfident, trapped, poor-communicating, un-attracted to Lacey, on-the-edge and ‘dying’.
Throughout the story the author uses symbolism as a means to position the reader towards the characters. Near the end of the story, Molly “turns her ‘dying’ face to the ground, and there were her feet, marching on, one, the other, one, the other”. This statement implies that Molly had given up, and that she was doomed to this life, and that she couldn’t escape it, so she kept pushing through her life of suffering.
The author also uses symbolism to show Lacey as a ‘childish’ and ‘immature’ person. When Molly pushes Lacey, he turns around with ‘baby-faced’ surprise, implying that he thinks and relates to things that a baby would do, not knowing how to comprehend the situation. Later, they are walking down the path, and she looks at him, and describes it as a ‘very old terribly frightened comforting-itself small child’ and that he had ‘fallen off the cliff alright’. The first statement suggests that although he was a fully grown man, he was but a child in his maturity, still trying to comprehend the situation. The second suggests that even though he didn’t fall off the cliff, it still had the same impact on their relation-ship and his feelings as it would have if he had fallen off anyway.
Finally, the symbolization of the actual Samphire plant in the story is used to show that the Samphire plant clings to the side of a cliff, relating to how Molly is on the edge of her emotions.
The author has uses a lot of characterization throughout this story, specifically what the protagonists think, do and say, to position the reader in certain ways toward the protagonists. Prime examples of these are when Lacey is thinking/talking to himself about how he was pleased for her coming up the cliff, and how he had to convince her to come up the cliff, trying to make himself feel proud and giving himself acknowledgement. After that he justifies his own actions, stating that if he hadn’t insisted (or nagged), then she would have stayed down on the beach (possibly what she wanted to do), and been a lazy puss. Further, Lacey ‘wags’ his finger in a gesture implying that she should always do what ‘her’ Lacey says, and he justifies himself once again, saying that love is about obeying and honour.
Another excellent example of the author’s use of characterization is how molly communicates. In fact, how she doesn’t communicate. She is a very uncommunicative person who hardly ever speaks her opinion, let alone fights for it. The author positions Molly as being very passive and unconfident in this way. For example, at the end of the story, they are atop the cliff and she is trying to push him off, but she loses most of her strength in her battle of confidence. She also tends to ignore Lacey a lot, doing mostly what he says without any of her own opinion taken into account. These examples show how the author has
Using the device tone, that way in which the protagonists talk, the author is able to portray the protagonists in certain ways. Lacey is described as having a ‘very high, rather unmasculine voice’. This could further position the reader to consider Lacey as child-like and immature. As well as this, Lacey also emphasizes his words. This is because of Molly ignoring him, as stated previously, and how Lacey is always seeking attention, acknowledgement and assurance, much as a child would from its mother.
The author’s use of tone for Molly is very different from Lacey. She is a very passive person who ignores Lacey a lot, much like the other characters that are seen in the story. They take little notice of Lacey and tend to just ignore him when he ‘brags’ about his Samphire. An example of Lacey’s bragging could be when he called out to the man walking past them near the pier, “We are going to see if we can get a bunch of jolly good Samphire that we saw on the cliff yesterday!”, to which the man simply nodded.
Point of view is another technical device that the author uses quite well. From the way that Lacey talks to himself/the reader, we are able to see exactly what he is thinking. This is especially evident in the section in which he is justifying himself about convincing Molly to climb the cliff for the first time. He states, “He had been quite right insisting, hadn’t he? It was worth it when you were there, wasn’t it?” This shows just how the protagonists think, having the ability to be as descriptive about Molly.
These techniques (symbolism, characterization, tone, point-of-view) are well utilized by the author, positioning the reader to see Lacey as a childish, manipulative, dominative, nagging, attention and assurance seeking, and Molly as a passive, unconfident, trapped, poor communicating, on-the-edge and ‘dying’.
Richard Lindon