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Essay - Our Nicky’s Heart

You can live a great part of your life knowing that the world and your surroundings won’t drastically affect your way of living and your state of mind. The feeling of having everything in place in your life and the certainty of being able to deal with whatever might wait for you in the future. Some people will face minor challenges and some people will face major challenges in their life, and when that happens decisions have to be made. Decisions you make based on what you believe is the right thing to do. Consequently, decisions however won’t always be fulfilling because the outcome of whatever you choose to do won’t always positively affect yourself. The short story “Our Nicky’s Heart” written by Graham Swift, depicts how a family is forced into a tough situation where the magnitude of the decision they have to make is almost beyond themselves. The story revolves around the themes death and technology - how technology is used as sustenance.

We’re firstly introduced to a family consisting of a father whose name is Frank Randall, and his three sons Michael, Eddy and Mark. The father earns a living by having a farming business and believes that his three sons are a good investment for it. Frank has a wife whose name we don’t know, nevertheless we do know that she urgently wants to give birth to a fourth child namely a girl. “But she could have done with a daughter to leaven the male dough” (Page 105, lines: 13-14). She becomes pregnant and secretly names the baby Sally. However the baby turns out to be a boy and is named Nicky. Mark who is presumably the the brighter kid in the family “Mark, the ‘clever one, the renegade - or the one with ambition and sense’”(Page: 106, lines: 11-12) is also the first-person narrator. Therefore, it’s through his eyes we experience the different events in the story. Nicky was not considered the family’s most genial boy: “he was the cocky, reckless young stud and, being such, was indulged like none of the brothers had been” (Page: 105, lines: 23-24). Regardless of these things his mother loved him anyway and was even her favorite child, who she doted on. When Nicky becomes sixteen years old he scrapes together enough cash to buy a motorcycle. The mother isn’t quite accepting towards this ”Michael and Eddy would never have been allowed to do this, nor would I, if I'd wanted,” (Page 107, lines: 16-18) “ but because it is Nicky it’s somehow all right. She doesn’t like to oppose his decisions so even though she is worried he gets it his way this time. “he could twist her round his finger. All the same, I could see her dreading the worst, and it happened.” (Page 107, lines: 20-23) As a result, Nicky ends up in a fatal accident, which leads to his death two days after.
In those two days the family was staying at the hospital to learn the seriousness of the situation. The doctor informed them about his condition and said that he due to a brain injury wouldn’t regain consciousness again. At this point they’re certain that only one decision has to be made and that is to let him go. But a little later another doctor says: “in these situations more than one decision has to be made” (Page 108, lines: 27-28) and afterwards asks to have Nicky’s healthy removed so it can be transferred into another person. This was a big shock for them. Who are they to make a decision regarding another person life? The mother began to fathom the idea of someone else maybe near where they were walking around with Nicky’s heart. She somehow despite the hopelessness of the situation saw hope that Nicky still could live, but just in someone else, a second Nicky “some person in a situation, in its way, not unlike Nicky's, some person, in fact, not unlike Nicky, a kind of second Nicky” (Page 109, lines: 23-24) Therefore she made the decision, which was agreeing to a heart transplant...
Technology put this family into a situation where they were forced into making a decision that felt completely out of their hands to make, however if technology hadn’t gone this far, then it would have been much easier to cope with, because then they wouldn’t have been able to do anything. To make a decision about a person’s life where the person doesn’t have any influence or whatsoever, is really a very tough doing. The thought of someone else is walking around with your sons/daughters organs can reward you with hope that the person that died still lives in someone else, but can also fill you with anguish, because you won’t ever know for sure.
Because of technology we have power to decide things that really already should be settled for us, which shouldn’t be decidable. And what we know from the short story “Our Nicky’s Heart” it’s really tough to make these kind of decisions, because it can put you in a tough spot emotionally afterwards.