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Abduction

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Submitted By MikkelS
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Nowadays, success, a happy family, a good career and material wealth equals a happy life. Some people lose themselves in the middle of the search for all these things. They are so focused on the creation of this identity that they forget, or even try to repress, their real identity and roots. They are so determined to create this new happiness-recipe identity that they forget their real wishes, roots and personality. The short story “Abduction” by Shelagh Delaney deals with this subject.
We encounter a very unusual relationship between Ann and her younger brother. Their living together is normal; however, the way Ann brought him to live with her in London is noteworthy. She told their parents that she was taking him – 16 years old at the time - to live at her home; and simply did it without any sort of refusal. You would think that they would have objected in some way, but she was able to convince them. Yet, the odd part is how she treats her brother. She gives him allowance, she pays everything for him, she makes sure he is taken care of job-wise etc. She acts as if she was his mother and strangely enough, as the following line indicates “But he knew his sister expected something of him…” (p. 2, l. 51), he is responding as if he in fact is her son. This view is already put forth by his wife who directly asks him if she actually is his mother in disguise as a sister.
First of all we are told in the early stages of the story about Ann’s youth and some of her former decisions: “She lived for her work. She only regretted that most people don’t have the sense to do what she’d done when she was a young woman and get themselves sterilised” (p. 1, l. 20-22)
Sterilization is not something people normally would volunteer for, so it would wonder why she did it. A hypothesis could be that she went through a time where her only wish was for her to be incapable of giving

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