Alan Sillitoe On Saturday Afternoon
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Alan Sillitoe
On Saturday Afternoon
Summary
In the story a boy aged 16, who grows up in a working-class environment, reflects on a special experience he made, when he was still a little boy aged 10. He encountered a man trying to hang himself. The whole story is told from a first-person-narrator's point of view, but there are actually two narrators in the story. There are parts which show the feelings and thoughts of the 16-year-old teenager and there are parts where he seems to travel back in time and shows us his emotions and impressions at the age of ten.
At the beginning of the story the 10-year-old boy describes that one Saturday afternoon when the whole family is at the cinema he is left at home for uncertain reasons. He is really annoyed and disappointed. In a brooding mood he sits next to the fire place in the same way as his father always does, which occurs quite often.
Here the narration is interrupted for the first time and the teenage boy offers additional information and thoughts about his family to the reader. The family is not a very lucky family, the father suffers from depressions which are combined with outbursts of anger. This doesn't make life for the other family members easier...