The Dead Child Essay, Research Paper

An overview of the short story “The Dead Child”

The Dead Child written by Gabrielle Roy is a story about how an young inexperienced substitute teacher helps her students to deal with the death of their peer-Yolande. The story takes place in a small Metis villege in Manitoba on a summer day in June during The Great Depression. The setting is divided into three scenes: the classroom, Yolande’s house and outside of the house. The main characters are the narrator, the teacher, her students, and the dead child Yolande. The teacher’s obstacles are her inexperience, the emotional distance between her and the students and the memory of the dead child. For the students the difficulties are depression caused by the death of Yolande and having 3 teachers in one year.

Overall the short story deals with the teacher’s immediate problemes. However one becomes a lasting and painful memory. Skillfully the teacher uses several stategies in order to help herself and her students. Her first strategy is encouraging the students to talk about Yolande.Then she suggest that they visit Yolande’s house. She suspects that activities resulting in a sense of competition and play may help the children take their minds off Yolande’s death. She asks them to keep the flies away from her forehead and gather bouquets of wild roses for her. Her strategies prove successful except for the fact that the memory of the dead child begins to haunt her.

The outcome as implaied above, is that the teacher overcome the immediate problems. However, as the opening and closing lines revels she can not reconcile herself to the death of the child. That is she is haunted by the memory of Yolande, especially and ironically speaking in the middle of summer.