Doubled up with Pain

Doubled up with pain is a short story written by Duncan McLean

At the start of the story we are introduced to John, his son, and John’s friend Freddy.

The three of them are sitting, drinking beers and talking about old times, when John gets the urge to tell his son about his mother, Agnes. John was in front of The Central Bar when he has a stomach problem, indigestion to be exact.

As he is bend over in pain, which is also what the title of the story means, two ladies around his age walks up to the mailboxes next to him and soon one of them starts to talk about what a disgrace John, standing bend over in pain, is to be drunk at this time of day. John, who isn’t drunk decides to set things right and tell the two ladies how it is, they start walking away but suddenly Agnes, who had been quiet this whole time turns around walks back to John and excuses her friends behaviour, asking what he had been up to then.

John tells Agnes that he had been at the job center trying to get a job, when he came down ill.

Agnes then tells John to come along with her and her friend, as the Shipper’s office they worked at had been looking for a male employee for some time. John agrees and starts working along side Agnes.

This leads them to become married, move in together and with time their son comes along, but soon after that Agnes is gone. We are not told where Agnes went, it seems she might have died but she could have left them for all we know.

As John start to round up the story his son suddenly has some questions though he has been quiet the whole time of the story, John gets quiet and again he stands bend over in pain “doubled up in pain”, but not physical pain this time, no this is sorrow and sadness mixed together.

The story makes use of two narrators, the narrator that is primarily used is a third person limited narrator, what might make this a bit weird is that the third person limited narrator also phrases some of the phrases as a first person limited narrator. Both narrators are limited and there is an explanation to that, through the first person narrator we get John’s point of view, his feelings and thoughts. Through the third person narrator comes the objective story, none of Johns feelings or thoughts are expressed through here.

The story starts in medias res as we are thrown into the story at a given time.

The primary story takes it’s place in a flashback and we move through time as