Happy Birthday, 1951

1: Summary
Happy Birthday, 1951 is a tale about an elderly man and 7-year-old boy, who lives in the ruins of a war-torn city. Soldiers demand the two to fill out documents with information such as age and name. The elderly man does not know the boy’s age or birthdate. Therefore they decide to celebrate the boy’s birthday the next day, and the man decides to take the boy to a green and living place outside the devastated city. In addition, the man creates a cart for the boy, which the boy rather sees as a tank.

On their way to the place, the boy spots an old, rusty tank, which fascinates the boy. The man becomes more and more irritated by the boy’s admiration of things connected to war, which culminates in the man becoming angry with the boy. When the elderly man wakes up after a nap, the boy is gone. The man finds him saying ”Gotcha!” while seated in the tank’s turret pointing towards him.

2: Characterization
The young boy was born in the latter half of the Second World War. We can extract this piece of information because of the short story’s title (1951), and because the boy has not gotten any birthday presents in the first six years of his life, which means that the boy turns 7 years in the short story. The boy’s nationality, name and birthdate are also unknown. The boy’s mother was a refugee, who probably delivered her baby to the old man because she feared for her life.

The young boy has lived his whole life in a cellar in a shattered city. Therefore he cannot remember much if anything nothing from the war. This is why he does not have the same view on soldiers and tanks as the old man, who takes care of him. The boy admires the soldiers and the tanks, like many male children do at that age, and he has examined them closely, ””Black and red is the engineers,” interrupted the boy seriously...” (p. 3, ll 88-90).

When the boy’s