The Stone Boy (Criticism)

Criticism

Cynthia Bily

Bily teaches English at Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan. In the following essay, she discusses experiences of grief in ‘The Stone Boy.”

When nine-year-old Arnold realizes that he has accidentally shot his brother Eugene to death in “The Stone Boy,” his response seems strange: rather than running back home for help, he continues on to the garden as the brothers had intended to do together, and picks half a tub of peas — his share of the job. Only when he has finished the picking does he return home, and only when his father speaks to him does he tell his parents the awful truth: “Eugie’s dead.” For the rest of the story, as the people around Arnold try to come to terms with what has happened, the fact of Eugie’s death seems less troublesome to them than Arnold’s first response

They might come to forgive him for killing his brother — after all, it was an accident — but they cannot forgive him for not appearing sorrier about it.

Arnold realizes, when his father and Uncle Andy ask him about the accident, that it is his own response that is so troubling to the adults. “When they had asked him why he hadn’t run back to the house to tell his parents, he had had no answer — all he could say was that he had gone down into the garden to pick the peas. His father had stared at him in a pale, puzzled way, and it was then he had felt his father and the others set their cold, turbulent silence against him.” That night, when the neighbors come to comfort the family and share memories of Eugie, Arnold sits silently among them, and the men notice and taunt him. “Not a tear in his eye.” “He don’t give a hoot, is that how it goes?“ “If your brother is shot dead, he’s shot dead. What’s the use of gettin’ emotional about it? The thing to do is go down to the garden and pick peas. Am I right?”

Their reaction to Arnold’s reaction causes him to question it himself. When he tells the story to the sheriff, this time “it seemed odd now that he had not run back to the house and wakened his father, but he could not remember why he had not.” With a child’s trust in the adults around him, he accepts their judgment about him. “Andy and his father and the sheriff had discovered what made him go down into the garden. It was because he was cruel, the sheriff said, and didn’t care about his brother.”

But surely the adults, confused by their grief, are wrong about Arnold. Arnold, after all, is only a young boy. The narrator emphasizes his youth in the story’s beginning, revealing in the third sentence that “he was nine, six years younger than Eugie,” and presenting a striking, peculiar image soon thereafter: as Arnold tries to wake Eugie and the boys wrestle, “all in an instant, he was lying on his back under the covers with only his face showing, like a baby.” The age comparisons and the baby image serve to reinforce the boys comparative positions. Arnold is younger, “it was he who was subordinate,” and Eugie is older, in command, and literally “on top.”

As child psychologists and pediatricians have pointed out in recent decades, children manage grief in their own predictable ways. Penelope Leach, for example, in Your Growing Child, explains that “children’s grief does not always show itself in ways adults approve or can even recognize. Tears, loss of appetite, and disturbed sleep, almost universal in mourning adults, may be almost or completely absent in a grief-stricken child whose distress may show up in . . . a stalwart refusal to admit to feeling anything at all.” Arnold demonstrates this clearly, particularly when he goes to bed that first night in the room he previously shared with his brother. “He felt nothing, not any grief. There was only the same immense silence and crawling inside of him, the way the house and fields must feel under a merciless sun.”

The mistake the adults make is in forgetting that Arnold is a child. Uncle Andy, who doted on Eugie, taunts Arnold by pointing out to the other men, “If we d’ve shot our brother, we d’ve come runnin’ back to the house, cryin’ like a baby.” But as Leach points out, that kind of response to grief is more typical of adults than of children. Andy is a grown man, and what he would have done does not help explain what a child should have done. The sheriff points out to Arnold’s father, “It’s come to my notice that the most reasonable guys are mean ones. They don’t feel nothing.” But Arnold is not one of the “guys” the sheriff has come across in his duties. He is not a hardened criminal, but a little boy.

Arnold’s behavior rings true to anyone who spends time observing children, or who can remember what it was like to be a child. When Arnold realizes what he has done, his first action is to pick the half a tub of peas he was sent for. Isn’t it typical for a child to try to make up for a bad deed by making a display of doing his chores? After he has told his parents that Eugie is dead, he runs out to the barn to hide in the loft — again, very typical behavior. (In the often-told family legend about the time I kicked in the screen door, I hide out in the attic until my parents come home and find me.) Andy may be right about how he would respond to a terrible accident, but he shows no understanding of Arnold’s predictable behavior.

The neighbors seem to want Arnold to feel guilty, and to see him punished. Orion, who is older than Eugie and married, almost brags when he claims, “If I’d of done what he done, Pa would’ve hung my pelt by the side of that big coyote’s in the barn.” The question of Arnold’s guilt and feelings of guilt has drawn the attention of reviewers, some of whom believe that Arnold — consciously or subconsciously — killed Eugie on purpose because he was jealous of his older brother’s power and status. The sheriff raises the issue when he asks whether Arnold and Eugie were “good friends,” and whether they ever quarreled. I cannot find any hint of Arnold intending to cause harm in the description of the accident, but Leach explains that guilt feelings are to be expected in Arnold whether he intended harm or not: “Most children will feel guilt over any death which is significant to them . . . . Most children find it difficult to sort out feelings from actions and may believe, or half-believe, that the anger they felt on the morning of the death actually caused or contributed to it. Brothers and sisters often wish each other dead — and then find themselves apparently monstrously all-powerful.”

Through all of the neighbors’ and relatives’ sly accusing, Arnold’s parents remain silent. They do not say anything against Arnold, but neither do they speak up for him. Most importantly, they do not speak to him. On the ride to the sheriff's office, Arnold sits between his father and his uncle. “No one spoke.” Arnold avoids his family for the rest of the day, but joins them again at dinner time. Again, “no one spoke at supper, and his mother, who sat next to him, leaned her head in her hand all through the meal, curving her fingers over her eyes so as not to see him.” In the story’s most heartbreaking scene, when Arnold goes downstairs to see his mother, “hoping to dig his head into her blankets and tell her about the terror he had felt when he had knelt beside his brother,” she will not even let him enter her room. She rejects him, sends him back to bed, and he is left only with an insistent silence: “silently, he left the door and for a stricken moment stood by the rocker. Outside everything was still. The fences, the shocks of wheat seen through the window before him were so still it was as if they moved and breathed in the daytime and had fallen silent with the lateness of the hour.”

The image of the nine-year-old boy standing in the dark, utterly alone and “unpardonable,” is painful. Arnold’s reaching for his mother, his wish to “clasp her in his arms and pommel her breasts with his head, grieving with her for Eugene,” is instinctive, and her rejection seems cruel. But psychology points out that her response, too, is natural and predictable. Leach cautions parents that “it is easy to be so lost in personal grief that the child’s is underestimated. This is especially liable to happen when it is a brother or sister who dies. Parents feel themselves the principal mourners and those around them do too. The grief of brothers and sisters is often underestimated; sometimes they are openly pushed out of the way.” Arnold’s mother fails him, but she is not cruel — at least not intentionally. Like Arnold, she is doing her best to bear an unbearable grief.

Although “The Stone Boy” depicts characters who have failed themselves and each other, Berriault does not condemn them for their failures. She presents a clear and unfaltering narration of painful events, and challenges the reader to confront the images directly, but she does not judge. This is a story, she seems to say, of a terrible grief and the damage is does to a family. There are no villains, and no heroes — just ordinary people struggling with an extraordinary circumstance. As she explains in a Literary Review interview with Bonnie Lyons and Bill Oliver, “If there is a recurring theme” in her work, “it’s an attempt at compassionate understanding. Judgment is the prevalent theme in our society, but it’s from fiction we learn compassion and comprehension.”

Source: Cynthia Bily, for Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2000.

Liz Brent

Brent has a Ph.D. in American Culture, with a specialization in cinema studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in American cinema. In the following essay, she discusses the imagery of light and darkness in terms of judgment and redemption in “The Stone Boy.”

The main character in Gina Berriault’s “The Stone Boy” is a nine-year old boy who, having accidentally shot and killed his older brother with a .22 caliber rifle, suffers from such extreme shock that he is unable to express even the slightest signs of grief. However, although Arnold shows no outward signs of sadness or remorse, his fear of judgment and his yearning for forgiveness are expressed through the story’s imagery. Arnold’s feelings of guilt and fear of judgment are expressed through references to light, which are suggestive of a godlike presence, both accusatory and redemptive. The stares and looks of the members of his family and community also indicate themes of judgment and guilt, as associated with vision and light. Finally, imagery suggestive of the mother-child relationship implies the possibility of redemption and mercy through the spiritual properties of maternal love and forgiveness.

Arnold’s awareness of the properties of light, after he accidentally shoots his brother Eugie, evoke a Christian iconography suggestive of a godlike presence. After accidentally shooting Eugie in the face and killing him in the early hours of the morning, Arnold goes to the garden to pick peas, as he and his brother had originally planned. In a state of shock at this horrible event, Arnold automatically behaves as he normally would. Yet, while Arnold at this point seems to have no consciousness that his brother has been killed, his awareness that the sun has risen is described in language which implies the hand of God upon his back: “It was a warmth on his back, like a large hand laid firmly there, that made him raise his head.” At this point, the large warm hand evokes imagery of a forgiving God, who has placed a “warm,” comforting or guiding hand on the back of the boy.

Later in the story, however, Arnold, associating vision with light, comes to associate light through the gaze of others with the negative judgment of those around him. Arnold’s perception of condemnation in people’s gaze is reinforced by his perception of the condemnation implied by silence. When Arnold can only tell the sheriff that his reason for not immediately informing the family of his brother’s death was that he had gone to pick peas, Arnold perceives that he has been deemed a guilty man: “it was then he had felt his father and the others set their cold, turbulent silence against him.” And it is his father’s eyes in particular which seem to condemn him: “Arnold shifted on the bench, his only feeling a small one of compunction imposed by his father’s eyes.” The sheriff’s judgment of Arnold takes on religious implications when he sends Arnold and his father home after questioning: “Then the sheriff lifted his hand like a man taking an oath.” From Arnold’s perspective, the sheriff’s judgment upon him comes in the form of a “oath” before God, proclaiming him guilty. The judgment represented by the sheriff’s hand contrasts markedly with the judgment represented by the warmth of the sun as the hand of God.

After leaving the sheriff’s office, Arnold, his father and his uncle return to their car. It is at this point that Arnold becomes increasingly aware of the eyes of others bearing down upon him: “Arnold saw that his uncle’s eyes had absorbed the knowingness from the sheriff s eyes. Andy and his father and the sheriff had discovered what made him go down into the garden. It was because he was cruel, the sheriff had said, and didn’t care about his brother.” Because Arnold experiences the gaze of others as a judgment upon him, an affirmation of his guilt, he responds by deferentially avoiding their eyes: “Arnold lowered his eyelids meekly against his uncle’s stare.” In the light of the accusatory stares of those around him, Arnold attempts to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. When relatives and neighbors stop by his family’s house that evening, Arnold is almost paralyzed by the fear of calling attention to himself, “He knew that although they were talking only about Eugie they were thinking of him, and if he got up, if he moved even his foot, they would all be alerted.”

Getting ready for bed that night, Arnold fears both the darkness and the light. Fear of darkness is sometimes associated with fear of one’s own conscience, or fear of death. Contrary to his usual habits, Arnold waits until the last minute to blow out the light after going to bed that night: “In his room he undressed by lamp light, although he and Eugie had always undressed in the dark, and not until he was lying in his bed did he blow out the flame.” But, once in bed, Arnold again associates light with the godlike judgment of a “merciless sun”: “He felt nothing, not any grief. There was only the same immense silence and crawling inside of him, the way the house and fields must feel under a merciless sun.” When he awakens in the middle of the night and approaches his parents bedroom, in hopes of expressing to his mother his grief over his brother’s death, Arnold is met with an implied condemnation by his mother; she responds to his knock by replying: “Go back! Is night when you get afraid?” His mother’s reply harshly implies that Arnold is afraid of the night because he is afraid of his own guilty conscience. With this condemnation, she turns him away from the possibility of redemption he seeks in her arms.

Upon being condemned and turned away by his mother, Arnold again fears the light, which is associated with his father’s judgment upon him. He sees his father outside in the yard, “his lantern casting a circle of light by his feet.” In association with his father’s arrival back in the house, “the lantern still lighting his way,” Arnold suddenly becomes aware that he is naked. This sudden awareness of his nakedness is associated with the light which his father’s lantern is soon to cast upon him. Arnold’s nakedness is symbolic of the nakedness of his soul, as if his father’s judgment, upon seeing Arnold, would be utterly unforgiving, since: “his nakedness had become unpardonable.” Arnold thus wishes to escape the light of his father’s judgment: “At once he went back upstairs, fleeing from his father’s lantern.”

While Arnold fears the light of judgment in the eyes of his father, he conceptualizes forgiveness and redemption in association with that which is maternal: his mother’s breast, the pitcher of milk at the breakfast table, the cow with the newborn calf. In knocking at his mother’s door at night, Arnold had imagined a scene of confession or begging of forgiveness at his mother’s breast, in hopes of a kind of redemption through maternal love: “He had expected her to realize that he wanted to go down on his knees by her bed and tell her that Eugie was dead. She did not know it yet, nobody knew it, and yet she was sitting up in bed, waiting to be told. He had expected her to tell him to come in and allow him to dig his head into her blankets and tell her about the terror he had felt when he had knelt beside his brother. He had come to clasp her in his arms and pommel her breasts with his head, grieving with her for Eugene.”

Turned away from this possibility of forgiveness at his mother’s breast in the night, Arnold the next morning vows never to ask his parents for anything again. He lowers his eyes deferentially, fearing their accusatory stares: “At breakfast, he kept his eyelids lowered to deny the night.” But when his father reminds his sister to pass him the pitcher of milk at breakfast, Arnold is given some hope that he may be welcomed back into the bosom of his family: “Relief rained over his shoulders at the thought that his parents recognized him again.” The pitcher of milk is suggestive of the nurturing powers of maternal love and forgiveness, for which Arnold longs. This maternal imagery as a sign of redemption is echoed in Arnold’s father’s mention of the cow which has gone up the mountain to have its calf. Arnold immediately sets out to retrieve the cow and newborn calf, to “switch the cow down the mountain slowly, and the calf would run at its mother’s side.” The image of the calf running at its mother’s side is evocative of Arnold’s desire to be back in his mother’s good graces, to regain her maternal affection and nurturing love.

But, while the image of the cow and calf express a sense of hope that Arnold may be granted his mother’s forgiveness, the closing lines of the story leave the reader in doubt as to whether or not Arnold will be capable of asking this of his mother, and whether or not his mother will be capable of granting it. At the point when his mother asks what he had wanted from her the night before, Arnold is incapable of telling her: “‘I don’t want nothing,’ he said flatly.” The final line of the story leaves the reader with a chilling doubt as to whether or not Arnold and his mother will ever be able to restore the mother-child bond represented by the cow and calf: “Then he went out the door and down the back steps, frightened by his answer.”

Source: Liz Brent, for Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2000.

Rena Korb

Korb has a master’s degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publications. In the following essay, Korb discusses several of the questions raised by “The Stone Boy” and poses possible answers.

In 1975, in one of her rare public statements, Gina Berriault commented on the weltanschauung, or “world view,” of her writing. She told World Authors: “My work is an investigation of reality which is, simply, so full of ambiguity and of answers that beget further questions that to pursue it is an impossible task and a completely absorbing necessity. It appears to me that all the terrors are countered by a perceptible degree by the attempts of some writers to make us known to one another and thus to impart or revive a reverence for life.” Berriault’s statement certainly applies to her well-known short story which invites analysis and inquiry but provides no absolute answers.

The Stone Boy first appeared in Mademoiselle magazine in 1957, but it drew the attention of reviewers when it was included in Berriault’s collection, The Mistress, and Other Stories, eight years later. The Stone Boy is immediately riveting in its subject matter. Nine-year-old Arnold, while passing through a wire fence, catches his gun. It discharges, and a bullet lodges in the neck of his older brother, Eugie. Eugie dies. However, this tragic incident is only the departure point for Berriault’s story of alienation and failed relationships. For Arnold does not immediately return to his family and tell them what happened; instead, he continues with the task he set out to do that morning: picking peas. His family is horror stricken, both by the news of Eugie’s death and by Arnold’s reaction to it. They do not know how to view Arnold so they cling to the sheriff's assessment of Arnold. According to the sheriff, Arnold is such a cold person that he didn’t bother to change his schedule because there was nothing that could alter the fact of Eugie’s death. The sheriff labels Arnold a “monster,” but in essence, he defines Arnold as a sociopath. By the next day, Arnold, too, comes to accept this opinion of himself, and in one heartfelt moment, transforms himself into such a being.

While The Stone Boy does not employ intricate narrative devices, it nevertheless presents a full, compelling story. This story invites even the casual reader to speculate as to its whys and wherefores. Ambiguity, a central theme in much of Berriault’s work and to her perception of her writing, emerges foremost in the story, almost from the opening lines. Although the casual reader may be tempted to think this story will be a coming-of-age or a rite-of-passage story, Berriault dispels that notion quickly and efficiently, with Eugie’s sudden death. At this point, the story truly begins to invite the readers’ careful analysis, as Berriault would want it to.

Although Charles Poore wrote in The New York Times that Arnold’s “murder” of Eugie is “explicit,” whether Eugie’s death was an accident emerges as just one of Berriault’s many ambiguities. A solid determination of any intention to kill Eugie cannot be found in Arnold’s reaction to this horrible event. Later in the story it is revealed that Arnold felt “terror” at what had occurred; at the moment it happens, however, Arnold only feels “discomfort.” In the immediate seconds following Eugie’s death, Arnold views his dead brother as an object causing displeasure bordering on disgust. He notes that Eugie’s blood “had an obnoxious movement, like that of a parasite.” Arnold is loath to approach or touch his brother; to determine whether or not Eugie is able to get up, Arnold only nudges him with a foot. When Eugie does not get up, Arnold commences picking peas.

The description of this task seems straightforward, with Arnold’s physical reaction mirroring his mental reaction: “Arnold set his rifle on the ground and stood up. He picked up the tub and, dragging it behind him, walked along by the willows to the garden fence and climbed through. He went down on his knees among the tangled vines.” However, Arnold is metaphorically repeating the actions that led to Eugie’s death; climbing through the garden fence is like climbing through the wire fence into the pasture; even the tangled vines echo the enmeshment of the barbed wire. Note is also made that Arnold’s “hands were strange to him.” While Arnold determines that this is caused by the cold weather, which numbs his hands, in reality, they have turned into something foreign — the hands of a killer. The numbing of Arnold’s hands foreshadows the numbing of his very soul.

Indeed, the story provides substantiation for both a reading of Arnold as murderer and Arnold as accidental killer. The opening scene clearly sets up Arnold’s animosity toward his brother, as he laughs “derisively” when Eugie is having trouble getting out of bed. In the kitchen, Arnold recognizes Eugie’s vanity — his older brother “offer[s] silent praise unto himself. “Also in the kitchen, Arnold notes that Eugie’s “brown curls grew thick and matted, close around his ears and down his neck, tapering there to a small whorl.” To Arnold’s perceptive eye, Eugie’s hair forms the very bullseye that Arnold’s bullet will strike just a short time later. At the same time, however, Arnold cares for and idealizes his brother. Arnold’s father, too, has noted the affection that Arnold seems to have for his older brother. Indeed, Arnold’s conflicted feelings for Eugie are best expressed by one sentence: “Eugie had had a way of looking at him, slyly and mockingly and yet confidentially, that had summed up how they both felt about being brothers.” Based on this evidence, answering the question as to whether or not Arnold intended or even wanted to kill his brother is not possible.

Another question posed by the story is why Arnold and his family so readily accept the sheriff’s judgment that the boy’s actions demonstrate that he has no feelings. For some undisclosed reason, the sheriff offers no other explanation. With little thought as to why Arnold would continue to pick peas, and with no explanation forthcoming from Arnold himself, the family’s authority figures — Arnold’s father and Uncle Andy — decide to accept the sheriff’s point of view; they willfully believe Arnold to be that merciless, unfeeling person. Arnold internalizes these opinions, particularly because the criticism comes from Uncle Andy, whose power over Arnold derives from his close resemblance to Eugie. Uncle Andy’s disapproval is further reinforced by the neighbors’ reactions. While Arnold hopes for their understanding, remaining in the parlor despite his discomfort so “they would see that he was only Arnold and not the person the sheriff thought he was,” Andy’s vocal assessment of the situation prevails.

By the end of the evening, Arnold is almost completely undone. Lying alone in bed that night, “[H]e felt nothing, not any grief.” However, Arnold still retains a spark of humanity. When he wakes suddenly in the night he only wants his mother to comfort him while he “tell[s] her about the terror he had felt when he knelt beside Eugie.” This is the first time the reader has heard about Arnold’s true reaction to Eugie’s death, but the reader hears little else about it, for Arnold’s mother not only rejects him but reminds him of how his community now views him. Her words, “Is night when you get afraid?” tell him that she believes that her son is indeed the kind of monster who can commit any sort of atrocity in the light of day. While returning to his room, Arnold realizes that he is naked, viewing it as an “unpardonable” offense. His state of undress symbolizes his feeling that his family and his community have seen through his skin, into the hidden recesses of his heart. Ironically, that terror actually resided in his heart at Eugie’s death, not malice, has no bearing anymore. Without anyone willing to see the “real” boy, Arnold becomes what they choose to see.

The next morning, however, Arnold almost grasps a chance at rehabilitation. His father forces his sister to acknowledge Arnold’s presence at the breakfast table. Although “relief rained over his shoulders at the thought that his parents recognized him again,” Arnold almost immediately “called upon his pride to protect him from them.” This final scene begs the question of why Arnold refuses to accept their peace offerings. Many possible answers can be posed, but as with other questions the story raises, perhaps no answer seems satisfactory. Arnold may have come to accept his new role in the course of one night, or he may be so angry at his parents for allowing him to be unfairly cast that he wants to punish them by withholding himself.

Perhaps the most likely answer stems from Eugie’s and Arnold’s relationship. Arnold has always modeled himself after Eugie, “enthralled” by his older brother. Because Eugie valued his place as the eldest child, so did Arnold. Now Arnold has become the eldest boy, and he feels he must fulfill the tasks that thus befall him. This explanation may help clarify why Arnold picked peas while Eugie lay dead — because that was the task he and Eugie had set out to fulfill. Now, at the breakfast table, as Arnold seems ready to accept his parents’ tacit apology, his father announces that a cow and her calf are up in the mountains. “That had been Eugie’s job, Arnold thought.” This short exchange reminds Arnold of what Eugie’s loss will mean to the family, that he is to blame for it, and that his family had excluded him in his time of need. When Arnold volunteers to get the calf himself, his is attempting to step into Eugie’s shoes, but he knows that he will never be able to truly do so.

Although so much of The Stone Boy is ambiguous and cannot be fully understood, what is clear is that by the end of the story, Arnold has undergone a complete transformation. When he tells his mother that he doesn’t want anything, his legs are “trembling from the fright his answer gave him.” Arnold does not embrace his new identity but feels he has little choice but to take it on. The reader is left with little doubt that the sheriff's dreadful prophecy of seeing Arnold again in the future is likely to come true.

Source: Rena Korb, for Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2000.

Sarah Madsen Hardy

Madsen Hardy has a doctorate in English literature and is a freelance writer and editor. In the following essay, she discusses how Berriault uses figurative language to illuminate the protagonist’s emotional state in

“The Stone Boy” is named for its protagonist, nine-year-old Arnold, who symbolically turns to stone after he accidentally kills his older brother in a hunting accident. In a story composed mostly of realistic exposition, this title stands out as a striking metaphor. Stone is cold and inert. It is associated with cruelty and also with death, both of which are states of unfeeling. A “stone boy” is simultaneously living and inert, warm and cold, sentient and insentient. While many stories offer readers the chance to vicariously experience a range of different emotions, “The Stone Boy” brilliantly represents emotion’s absence. Berriault uses both precise, unadorned description and lyrical similes to represent almost paradoxically — what it feels like to be unable to feel.

There is a contrast between the matter of fact exposition that makes up most of the story which reflects the way the literal minded farm community thinks and speaks — and the figurative language associated with Arnold’s moments of heightened trauma. Among the latter, particularly significant are the similes that Berriault uses to invest the inanimate land and atmosphere of the farm with sentience. Personification is a form of metaphor in which an inanimate object is endowed with the qualities of a living being. Berriault uses similes to the same effect. For example, when Berriault writes that the shocks of wheat outside of Arnold’s window were “so still it was as if they moved and breathed in the daytime and had fallen silent with the lateness of the hour” she attributes an almost human animation to the wheat by light of day, then remarks on its death-like absence. In the same passage, she also endows the quiet of the nighttime atmosphere with sight and consciousness: “It was a silence that seemed to observe his father.” Such personifying similes are interesting not only because they stand in contrast to the style of the majority of the story’s narration, but because they relate to the larger themes of life and death, emotion and coldness. Through the title, Berriault compares Arnold to an inanimate object, but through her similes, she gives inanimate objects human qualities, drawing a connection between feeling and its absence.

The opening scene of “The Stone Boy,” taking place before Arnold’s humanity has been called into question, describes the events of an ordinary morning as Arnold perceives them. Arnold experiences a range of typical emotions in regard to his older brother Eugie, from resentment and envy to admiration. The boys get up early to fulfill their responsibility to pick peas in the cool of the morning. Arnold takes his rifle with him to shoot for ducks, despite Eugie’s teasing and the fact that it is not hunting season. While crawling through a fence, the hammer of Arnold’s rifle gets caught on a piece of wire. When he tries to free it, it fires in the direction of his brother, who has just gone through the fence ahead of him. Berriault narrates the terrible events in direct, realistic language. “His rifle caught on the wire and he jerked at it. The air was rocked by the sound of the shot. Feeling foolish, he lifted his face, baring it to an expected shower of derision from his brother. But Eugie did not turn around. Instead, from his crouching position, he fell to his knees and then pitched forward onto his face.” Arnold thinks first about being teased for his clumsiness with the gun. When he sees that Eugie has been hit, he is completely surprised. As Arnold watches Eugie die, he undergoes a kind of death himself, for these feelings of foolishness and surprise are the last ordinary ‘human’ emotions that Arnold experiences. The impact of Eugie’s death stands in contrast to the complete normalcy of Arnold’s thoughts and feelings over the course of the morning, up through his last defensive feeling of embarrassment.

Then Arnold makes a choice that defines him as a “stone boy” — he continues with his morning chore of picking peas as if nothing remarkable had happened at all. Only when he returns home with the harvest and realizes that the family will wonder where Eugie is does he tell them flatly, “Eugie’s dead.” Based on the fact that Arnold has expressed no outward sign of grief or remorse as evidenced in his direct and emotionless report of the tragedy, his family and community judge him. They agree with the county sheriff's assessment that Arnold is “too reasonable” to feel anything and they condemn him, leaving him outside of the circle of their human society at a time when his unarticulated need for warmth and empathy is most intense. They treat him as if he were an object rather than a subject, a rock rather than a person. Undeniably, Arnold is emotionally numb. The third-person limited narrator has access to Arnold’s inner thoughts and feelings, and these do not directly refute the grounds for his condemnation. Indeed, Arnold regards himself as no longer human, acting only in order to maintain the family routine and reduce his conspicuousness, and making no attempt at contact with the people around him. Because Arnold becomes so detached from the innermost parts of himself, the narrational position may seem to offer readers little more than an objective account of events over the course of twenty-four hours following the shooting. So then, is it correct to conclude, along with the sheriff and Arnold’s Uncle Andy, that Arnold is simply cruel?

Berriault delicately offsets the flat, reasonable narration of the events of the day with striking figurative descriptions of the natural world. She uses lyrical language to define a view of the inanimate realm of nature as conscious and perceptive. This view, which is implicitly Arnold’s, stands in stark contrast to the spoken language the boy uses to communicate within the hostile human community. While the story’s exposition — like Arnold’s own explanations of his actions — is almost cruelly reasonable, Berriault’s figurative language is both gentle and illogical. The best writers employ figurative language such as metaphors and similes not just to make their writing sound beautiful or interesting, but to emphasize their ideas and add dimension to their characters. Berriault uses personification and simile to create a sense of empathy between Arnold and the farmland around him. By using figurative language to endow natural objects with feelings, Berriault suggests that Arnold’s very “stoniness” is a testament to the profundity of his experience of loss.

In death Eugie becomes part of the inanimate natural world, separate from human forms of communication. After Arnold watches his brother die, he calls out to him, “Hey, Eugie,” and is answered with silence. As Arnold looks at the inert body, Berriault uses a simile to connect Eugie, in death, to the non-human realm of the farm setting: “Eugie was as still as the morning around them.” From this point forward, Arnold too enters a non-human realm. Hereafter, he is detached from his family, his community, and what he had always taken for granted as himself, a boy defined against the towering figure of his older brother. As he leaves the scene of the accident and goes to pick peas, doing the task assigned to him, he cannot feel himself, “his hands were strange to him, and not until some time had passed did he realize that the pods were numbing his fingers.” Hereafter as well, nature is endowed with human characteristics. Berriault uses a simile that personifies the morning sun: “It was a warmth on his back, like a large hand laid firmly there, that made him raise his head.” The morning sun — an authoritative figure that is potentially both intimidating and comforting — calls him back to his role in the distant farmhouse, even as it reminds him of the irrevocable loss of that role. The sun reaches out and touches him, something that no one else does over the course of the harrowing day.

At the end of the day, in a scene that is contrasted to the normalcy of the story’s opening, Arnold goes to bed by himself in the room he had always shared with Eugie. At this moment when Arnold’s loss is so tangible, Berriault writes, “He felt nothing, not any grief.” This description is consistent with the conclusion the neighbors have just reached, discussing Arnold’s cold “reasonableness” as if he were not there, as if he were as imperceptive as stone. Lacking any other way to understand his state of shock, Arnold has accepted the literal-minded explanation offered by the sheriff and repeated by the others. “Andy and his father and the sheriff had discovered what had made him go down into the garden. It was because he was cruel, the sheriff had said, and didn’t care about his brother.” However, Berriault subtly modifies this assessment of Arnold’s emotional state with an unusual comparison. “There was only the same immense silence and crawling inside of him, the way the house and fields must feel under a merciless sun.” Arnold has no reasonable explanation for his numbness, so he draws a strange analogy between his feelings and those of the inanimate world with which he is most intimate. He imagines that the house and the fields have feeling — not a feeling that is comparable to the range of emotions he and those close to him have ever experienced, but feeling nonetheless. They feel “immense silence” and “crawling.” They feel the dreadful absence of emotion, connection, and communication. They are passive and helpless before the “merciless sun,” but they are not cruel. By all appearances Arnold does not feel sorry, his own loss or the loss that he has inflicted on his family, but he does feel for the world of objects of which he and Eugie, each in his way, are both now a part.

As the story ends, Arnold still feels like stone. His mother has rejected his bid for comfort, and he has in turn denied this bid. Verbal communication remains on both sides reasonable and cruel. But the careful reader sees the difference between what Arnold says and who he is, between his flat demeanor and the vast depth of his loss.

Source: Sarah Madsen Hardy, “The Sentient Stone: Simile and Empathy,” for Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2000.

What Do I Read Next?

• The Butcher Boy (1992) by Irish writer Patrick McCabe chronicles the descent of a neglected boy as he plunges deeper into madness and violence.
• The short story “Walking Out” (1980) by David Quammen tells the gripping story of a father-son hunting trip that goes awry.
• Gina Berriault’s second novel, Conference of Victims (1962, 1985), describes the effects a man’s suicide has on his closest family members.
• Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic novel Crime and Punishment (1911) explores the psychological effects of murder.
• Andre Dubus’ short story “The Fat Girl” (1988) tells of a girl who withdraws from the world through food.
• Women in Their Beds by Gina Berriault (1996) includes some of the author’s finest works from her 40-year career as well as new short stories.
• Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Good Country People” (1955) tells about how the actions of a merciless man affects a farm family.