Stolpestad Case
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By William Lychack
Stuck and chained without any tendency of where your life is headed, requires necessary effort to go through. This is the situation for the main character in William Lychacks short story, Stolpestad. Without any whereabouts of his life directions, Stolpestad comes across his own life through unpleasant confrontations of his own identity loss – “This is your life, Stolpestad” (P.2 l.5)
The short story, Stolpestad, is about a police man whose life has become pure triviality: He goes to work, waits for the shift to end, makes an excuse about working late to postpone his arrival at home, gets home, and goes to sleep. Then a day, just before his shift ends, he is asked to help a boy with his dog. At arrival he finds out that nothing can be done to help the dog because it is really hurt and just waiting to die, and he agrees with the family that the dog has to be put down – by him. He walks around the house, sits down and talks to the dog and then shoots it. The dog is a symbol of the man, it just lies there, has given up and just waits for its life to pass, but no matter what happens, even being shot, the dog stays alive. Just like Stolpestad, he is not living his life, but is not ending it either. The injury of the dog can also be interpreted as a simile for the environment and the town Stolpestad lives in. The Christian narrative of David and Goliath deals for Goliaths sake with the themes negativity and failure. The nickname “Gully” is a synonym for a sewer, which means, that the dogs name in both significances refers to something including degradation and poor environs. Goliath lies on all the refuse of the family within the familys premises and symbolizes the poor social environment that the family hails from. The family is tamped by this inadequacy in the society, which the dog and its name symbolize. The sentence:
“The old tires, empty bottles, paint cans, rusty car axle, refrigerator door” (P. 2 ll.24.25)
exemplifies what poor environment the family is a part of. The environment of the boys father may also explain the cause of his ironical compliments of Stolpestads house:
“He lets out a long sigh and says its a fine place you seem to have here” (P. 5 ll.137-138)
Still this higher league of society does not fit Stolpestad, and it does not seem like he has been in this contrast to the lower league of society his whole life, which also may cause the sympathy he has for the boy.
After shooting the dog he drives to the city, calls his wife to tell her that he is late, and then goes to the same bar as every day. His wife knows where he is and calls the bar to tell Stolpestad that someone is asking for him at home, he drives back to his house to meet the father of the boy, whose dog he shot earlier that day, and the boy. Even the news that the dog did not die, after he shot it, does not compel any emotion to surface. But maybe the narrating angle has a say in this matter.
The story is written with a narrator bound to the main character and unable to shift between characters and to see the emotions of Stolpestad. In the short story he is always referred to as “you” or “Stolpestad”. Using this form of narrator, the reader gets the same kind of experience