Perspectives

Graham Green’s style can become more accessible to you if you choose to put the short story “A Shocking Accident” into perspective.

Literary period

Graham Greene wrote between 1925 and 1991, so we can consider him a Modernist writer. Still, Greene was very critical of several Modernists (including Virginia Woolf), whom he accused of losing the sense of religion in their writing and, as a consequence, of creating repetitive characters. However, note that Greene’s work is separated (according to his own definition) into two categories: entertainments and serious novels.

The short story “A Shocking Accident” is a tragicomedy and belongs to the category of “entertainments”, being part of the collection called “May We Borrow Your Husband? and Other Comedies of the Sexual Life”. In this collection, genres such as tragicomedies or melodramas are predominant.

A tragicomedy is a literary genre in which tragic events blend with comical ones, often with the purpose of ending a serious text on a happy note. As you have seen, these features are also present in “A Shocking Accident”.

Works in the same genre

An interesting literary work that is also a tragicomedy is the play “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Becket. The play explores the absurdity of human existence (just like “A Shocking Accident” explores the absurdity of death) and the theme of irrationality. Two characters are depicted waiting for a man named Godot; however, the man never appears, but only functions as a trigger for the other characters’ emotions and struggles with their own existence. We advise you to read the play in order to discover the humour behind the replies, but also the sadness behind the fates of the characters.

Works with the same theme

The theme of coming of age has been skilfully explored in the short story “Just Like That” by Michael Richards. In the story, a boy is taken kangaroo hunting by his father, who does not seem to have any respect for animals or for the boy’s emotions. The moment that marks the boy’s coming of age is him shooting his father.

A similar short story is “Like Charlie” by John Boyne, in which a boy named Nick pushes his father off a boat because he has had enough with the man’s violent behaviour directed to him.

The same theme of coming of age is explored in the story “The Shining Mountain” by Alison Fell (Contexts, pp. 18), in which a girl needs to prove herself as worthy enough in the eyes of her father while climbing a dangerous mountain path.

Works by the same author

One of Graham Greene’s most famous short stories is “The Destructors”. In the story, destruction is what a group of boys view as entertaining, as they become obsessed with destroying an old house and even lock the owner inside it. In the end, although the house is destroyed, there is still an element of humour in the way the other characters receive the news.

You could also read the short story “I Spy” (Worlds of English, pp. 40), which deals with another type of father-son relationship. In the story, a young boy named Charlie spies on his father being arrested for espionage. As a consequence, he goes through a rite of passage that makes him the replacement of his father as the man of the family.