Themes and message

The relationship between parent and child

The main theme of the short story “Tin Man” by Jennifer Kerslake is the relationship between a parent and their child. The relationship between the narrator and her father is an important element in the story, as the two struggle to move on and rearrange their relationship to each other after the death of the narrator’s mother.

The narrator often shares her memories of her mother. From them, we notice that the mother was the one who took care of the narrator and fulfilled her emotional needs:

I dream of the last picnics we had in the garden, my head in her lap, eyes tracing aeroplane tails in the blue sky. For a few weeks she was like herself again, in her pretty dresses, arms freckled from the sun. She cut sandwiches into triangles and made butterfly cakes with lemon icing.

The narrator, therefore, deeply mourns the loss of her mother and seems to doubt that the father can effectively fill the void left by her. The narrator is poignantly aware that her father is unlike her mother, and often compares the two, such as when they eat dinner. She remembers that the mother used to tal...