Themes and message

The main themes of the short story “Owl” by Jackie Key are friendship and making the most of life. The author’s message is that friends can help us overcome difficult moments in life and see things from a different perspective. The story also teaches us to look at endings like new beginnings and to live our lives to the full. The themes of the story are also enhanced through motifs like fear (of loneliness and old age) or imagination versus reality (sometimes imagination helps us cope with challenging aspects of reality).

Friendship

The theme of friendship is explored through the main characters, Barn and Tawny. Although they knew each other from before, the two girls’ friendships is mostly based on a traumatic event. Spending their holiday with their parents, they discover that their parents have swapped partners—that one girl’s father is attracted to the other’s mother and the other way around.

This event brings the girls closer together although they never talk about it until late in their forties. Instead, Barn chooses to claim in front of another friend that her friendship with Tawny was a result of both of them befriending an owl and feeding it while on holiday. B...