Essay: Son of Satan

The short story ”Son of Satan” is a story about an eleven years old boy, who is telling us his story through his eyes. The story takes place in the narrator’s neighbourhood during the summer holidays. The narrator and his two friends Hass and Morgan are all bored and in lack something interesting to do they decide to harass one of the other boys from their neighbourhood called Simpson. The narrator claims that Simpson is lying about having sex with a girl and therefore they start beating Simpson whereupon they try to hang him. Simpson survives and tells his parents what happened. Simpson’s parents call the narrator’s father. When the narrator returns from his walk his father confronts him with the hanging and hits him.

The narrator is an ill-adjusted boy. He is the leader among his friends and wish to keep his statues. He may not show any weakness (l. 27. p. 42) and continues tormenting Simpson even though he thinks they got far enough he still continues (l. 25. p. 42).
On page 41 where they’re holding a kangaroo court the narrator takes the position as the judge and Morgan and Hass is beneath him and taking orders from the narrator. The boys don’t question his authority. In the very beginning of page 42 where Simpson tries to run off and Hass tackles and punches Simpson so the narrator slams Hass across the face with the rope to stop him and Hass doesn’t do much about it. And in line 16 on page 42 the narrator command Morgan to give him at cigarette who just simply do it. From these examples it’s clearly that the narrator is in charge of their group because they accept his authority and execute his orders.
After the hanging they all run off but the narrator has nowhere to go and when he runs back into the yard again and untie Simpson he feels some kind of emptiness and is afraid of feeling remorse. He had really no good reason for what