Essay Questions

What is the most immediately notable divergence from Lawson’s signature writing style in this story which makes it almost an entirely different sort of reading experience from his “yarns.”

Lawson remains, beyond any serious argument, one of the truly great masters of the short-short story often termed sketches in American and British literature, but which the Australians came to category as “yarns.” Using just five-hundred-thirty words to construct nineteen paragraphs totaling thirty-seven sentences, Lawson demonstrates the power of witchcraft in composing a story that boggles the mind with its density of incident and characterization with “On the edge of a Plain.” By contrast, this story uses almost exactly five times as many words to construct five times as many paragraphs and six times the sentences. It is not just the volume that sets “A Child in the Dark” apart from the typical Lawson yarn, however. The descriptive prose sentences (as apart from the dialogue) run much longer and demonstrate a much more “literary” complexity. As a result, the pace at which could comfortably read the story out loud is much more deliberate. Lawson’s yarns read like a conversation; not even an entire conversation, but more like the most interesting snatch of a longer conversation. This is a story featuring Lawson the author, flexing his literary muscles almost as to prove he could have written all his tales like this if he’d desired. It is a different sort of experience, but that does not imply a lesser one.

How does this story feature a much different type of irony than is usually found in Lawson’s short fiction?

Irony is pervasive throughout Lawson’s stories, but it typically trends toward the more lighthearted and humorous end of the spectrum. To return to “On the Edge of a Plain,” for instance, that entire yarn is constructed upon the ironic circumstance of a son and brother returning home after a prolonged absence exactly one day after his family had been mistakenly informed that he was dead. The potential for tragic irony is utterly reversed as the circumstances of celebration over the unexpected resurrection quickly sours and becomes the point of contention upon which the prodigal son heads right back out the door for what promises to be another prolonged absence. The irony in this story, however, is never afforded the opportunity for a such a reversal. In fact, it commences inexorably from his deceptively upbeat opening line to continuously fulfill all the worst expectations of the reader until ending becomes the final corrosive punchline of its much darker than usual narrative trajectory:

“NEW Year's Eve!”

“And so the New Year began.”

Lawson is notable for creating strong female characters in his stories that serve as positive representations of female empowerment. Why do critics almost universally agree that Emma is atypical of this overall trend?

In her thesis which examines the portrayal of women in Lawson’s fiction, Gwenyth Dorothy McLellan singles out the wife and mother of this story the author’s “single most bitter portrayal of a woman” just prior to describing Emma as essentially as a self-absorbed floozy. She is a neglectful mother, an ungrateful wife and indulges in the narcissist’s first line of self-defense: accusing others of being exactly what she is when, for instance, she accuses her husband of lying even though it is obvious she is the untruthful member of this unhappy household. Emma embodies nearly everything that most of Lawson’s other wives in the bush reject and even her ambitions toward reading and writing is cast in an unusually negative fashion.