The Arena – Analysis

The undoubtedly worst nightmare of any parent luckily remains just that in most instances. However, every once in a while the nightmare becomes shockingly brutal reality and someone loses their child. A grief, completely unimaginable for anyone who has never experienced it, is laid upon one as if it was a carpet of lead. For many people it is the sole aim that they have built their life around and with the blink of an eye it is gone.
How does a parent cope with this unparalleled pain? And is it possible to repress the memories and start a new life after an absolute lowpoint?
It is exactly this issue the short story ”The Arena” by Martin Golan provides an insight to.

The short story was written in 2008 and the setting is a father, who is also the first person narrator, driving his son to the local New Jersey suburb sports arena early in the morning. His son is attending an away game with his lacrosse team and is being dropped off at the team bus waiting outside the large ”structure of steel and cinder block” locally known as the Arena.
On his way there, the narrator’s mind starts wandering due to a mixture of early morning clarity and the deserted suburbian roads and it is soon made clear what his thoughts are surrounding. The father lives with his wife and their son, whom he is in the car with, but his thoughts keep circling around his previous life with another woman and their adopted, now deceased, son Willie. The traumatic event of losing his son in a traffic accident is still haunting him and he struggles to keep the past and present seperated. Despite attending counseling groups and trying to regain their old lives and habits, the narrator and his first wife feels an emptyness in everything they do together. Even though ”it wasn’t from lack of love” the narrator and his wife had decided that they could not stay together. The short story’s main litterary feature is the changing sections of past and present which truly ephasizes the internal struggle of the narrator. Sometimes the change is clear ”When Willie came into my life […]” other times, it is much more subtle ”At that moment I feel my wife turn in bed, rolling over so her hips no longer jut up in the sheet. This was strange: after we lost Willie […]”. This slightly confusing structure, clearly reflects the narrator’s state of mind and makes it easier for the reader to relate, rather than just having the narrator explain how troubled he is.
Another frequently utilized feature is the use of contrasts. In the beginning when describing the Arena he says “The Arena somehow manages to be too cold and too hot at the same time […]” and furthermore explains how he feels a physical discomfort but at the same time eased by seeing his child’s boundless delight. The contrasts are used to describe his equivocal thoughts, making hope and a bright future the traits of his living son, while Willie seems like an anchor of sorrow dragging the father in the wrong direction. Another example of how he remains to keep a part of him in the past is: “I check my rear-view mirror; […] When I look again through the front I sense that I am seeing not only ahead but also behind, that I’m glimpsing my future as well as my past.” The rear-view mirror is quite an accurate symbol of the mix between past and present going on inside the narrator’s mind, even though he is moving forward he always has an eye on the road behind him.
A very clear indicator of the narrator’s absence from the present is the deliberate omission of everyone’s name but Willie’s, a way of subconsciously let the reader realize how big a role Willie plays in the short story and in the narrator’s mind. Furthermore, it is pointed out, without having noticed it himself, how the narrator’s wife carries a strong resemblance to his former wife. These details makes it hard to believe that the narrator has actually moved on, but that he is rather trying make up for what happened with his previous ‘life’.

The title of the short story functions as more than just the name of a sports arena. The narrator uses arenas to describe different experiences in his life: “After that stress the plan to adopt was a breakthrough, until we learned it can be as difficult an arena as conception and labor […]” and “Early arenas leave their mark.” It seems as if he puts different phases of his life into arenas, the new wife and son being the latest of them, and these are best to be separated from each other.
Additionally the Arena itself reminds the narrator of Willie, perhaps because he used to spent time with him there, this is supported by what he says when getting closer to the Arena: ”Every time I’ve gone to the Arena I enter a personal arena, a battle from the past.” This makes the Arena a place where the narrator’s personal arenas fuse together to unite past and present. No matter hwo hurtful that might be.

The short story explains how a father to a lost son with an immence amount of grief inside of him attempts to move on and start a new family. However, he is still struggling with the memories of his son and the good life they had with his previous wife. No matter how hard he tries to be a present father infront of his second son, he keeps being reminded of his past. A tremendous wound has been opened inside of the father, the question that is left for the reader is if it will ever heal or just keep bleeding.

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