Mule killers The story begins in media res, the narrator starts telling the story right away without an introduction. The narrator is telling a story he is being told by his father, i.e. he tells a story in the story, and therefore it has a multiple point of view. It changes between a first person narrator and a third person narrator. It is an omniscient narrator, he is a messenger used to tell the story of his father and in some places in the text there appears comments from the narrator, for example: “It doesn’t matter; I can imagine it” (ll.49). We are in that way allowed access to his thoughts. The story takes place nearby Nashville, Tennessee in the beginning of the 20th century, when the tractors replaced the mules and thereby killed them. “My father (…) has his father’s height, and he carries it apologetically” (ll.7). Since he is carrying his height apologetically, it seems as if he has a hard time to live up to his father; he is not yet able to be the man that his father is, or so he thinks. When he sees his father crying under the tree he realizes that he also has emotions. He doesn’t understand why he is crying until many years later when he is in the garden picking asparagus with his son. The father is telling his story to his son when they are in the garden, a garden that used to be the mother’s garden. Since her death no one has taken care of it and now it is described as a blasted plot where nothing can grow, except for the asparagus. The garden could be a symbol of the Garden of Eden, which has been forgotten more or less as well, because of the development that has happened in society. The only thing that is able to grow in the garden is the asparagus, even though the garden has been ruined and no one has taken care of it, they are still growing there. The asparagus symbolizes the unchangeable, no matter what happens in the society and no matter how much it develops, the asparagus stay the same and they keep on growing. The major theme in this story is how progress influences the society and the people who live in it. We see this in the story from different generations. We see how they have a hard time adapt themselves to these changes and which losses there also follows when developments are happening. The progress may be physical as in the tractors taking over the mules, but it is also seen as a development from child to adult. In the poem To his lost love by Simon Armitage we are told about a man who has lost his great love. The poem deals with the theme “loss” as well as Mule killers does. The man in the poem never gets to experience all the love he wants, neither the good nor the bad; how they never slept like cutlery- / two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together, / or made the most of some heavy weather” (text 4, ll.6-9). It is just like the father in Mule killers, he is neither able to experience his true love, and must marry another woman because of his responsibility. It is very different how we react and what we think about progresses. In the story Mule killers it is depict as negative, as an end of an era and something that is fatal. It is the progress that takes Orphan away and kills him, it conveys death and hurts people and it results in people losing what they love. In the text Progress, development is a necessity and a natural thing that happens, and the man in the text sees it positively. But when we lose someone or something we love because of it, we may think back in time with nostalgia and remember how perfect things were before the development, and we thereby forget the positive aspects that progress also has. England In the extract from Lady Chatterly by D.H. Lawrence there is a totally other tone, it is much more dark and negative; The moon wouldn’t be far enough, because even there you could look back and see the earth, dirty, beastly, unsavoury among all the stars… (ll.3-5). It is a world that has been ruined by people and the machines. There is nothing left to love and nothing left to live for, the people hasn’t got any life to live. There is no hope and no future.