Themes and message

Loss and grief

The short story “Fusilli” by Graham Swift is structured around the feelings and thoughts of a grieving father who has just lost his son. Therefore, loss and grief are two major themes of the short story.

The story shows the difficult life of a father who is struggling to accept his son’s death. In the beginning of the story, the father is portrayed following his routine of weekly shopping (l. 24), seemingly trying to carry on with his life as normal. However, his life is changed by the loss of his son. The father and his wife decide to no longer celebrate Christmas (l. 3), to stop cooking fancy meals (ll. 62-63), and to never eat fusilli again (l. 47).

As he is grieving, the father is also shown to suffer from multiple emotional conflicts. He wants to remember his son (ll. 78-80), but at the same time he is terrified of thinking about him, as recalling the loss brings too much pain: “The only good thing was to ignore, ignore. But he couldn’t” (ll. 56-57). The father is torn between past and present, as he keeps remembering parts of his past life with Doug, but returns to the present to remember that his son is no longer alive.

His emotions are also divided, as he experiences several mixed feelings in connection with his son’s death: anger, fear, and grief. “Anger wa...