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Mule Killers
Lydia Peelle
Text”Mule Killers” is an American short story by Lydia Peelle at 2004. The story takes place in Nashville in USA. The text tells about the narrator’s father’s life when he was young in the mule killers period. The narrator’s father is in love with a girl named Eula Parker. He positions himself where he can see her when they are at the church. Eula Parker is a girl with thick purple-black and shining hair but others with onion paper pale hairs. One day the narrator’s father meet her with her girl friend at the street. He asks them to go for a soda, but only the onion pale hair girl says yes. Then go to the drugstore and order two sodas. Later they meet Eula at the drugstore. The narrator’s father thinks at first that she comes because of she cares about him, but later he finds out that she comes only for shopping. The narrator’s father turns his emotions to the onion pale hair girl and kisses her instead of. After a period he is told that the onion pale hair girl is pregnant. He tells his father (the narrator’s grandfather) about the pregnancy just after their best mule Orphan Lad is taken and slaughtered. Later he finds out his father stands under a tree, prays and cries for him.
The story happens in the period that tractors work at the farm instead of mules. In which I speculate is the period after industrialization. At that time a lot of animals were killed, for examples mules, as the text presents. The narrator’s grandfather lives in the generation that people live with norms, pray at the church, and work at the farm with animals. From the narrator’s father’s generation everything is changed. Although the narrator’s father listens to his father all the time, he does things which his father thinks is wrong. After he tells his father that he makes a girl pregnant but he is in love with another girl, his father repeats “this is wrong, you got no choice but to take care of it, this is wrong”. His father cannot accept or even...