In her story
"Night Calls," Lisa Fugard evokes a mood of melancholy and wistfulness, both of which
are tempered by hope and familial love. Description and setting are used throughout the story to
convey to the reader the fraught emotional landscape that Marlene and her father must traverse
in the years following the tragic death of Marlene's mother in a car accident.
From the story's opening paragraph, which takes place about five years after their
loss, Fugard sets the mood through Marlene's description of seeing her father as he picks her up
from the train station on a break from boarding school:
I remember it all clearly, standing in the
dust, watching him get out of the truck and walk toward me, noticing that there was no smile on
his face but still feeling my body move toward him, my arms opening for an embrace, something
rising in my throat.
Through the dust, no smile, arms
opening, and an unnamed "something" rising in her throat, Fugard describes the haze of
sadness and want which...
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