Shouting at Cars - Adam Marek

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get to know the narrator’s and the troll’s friendship as he looks back on their time together.

’’ We shouted at cars going by, folded bottle tops in half – he with his thumb and forefinger, me by stamping on them. We threw rocks in the river, threw in bricks, threw pebbles at seagulls roosting on top of lamp posts. We caught crayfish with bacon tied to lengths of string and then threw them up onto the bridge for cars to run over..... ’’ - P. 3 l. 114-117.

The qoute goes on until line 133. The narrator is telling the reader the troll infact had a name and he was, to him, a nice being.

Just like the narrator’s and the family’s relation to the troll this story is filled with contrasts.

One of them is the troll compared to normal. It is my firm belief that the villagers and the family is scared of the troll becuase he is simply abnormal. He is not supposed to live under a brigde. He is not supposed to roam around at night at set fire to shopping carts. He is doing everything the norm of this society tells them to do. Which is why they are scared.

Which brings me to the roll of the troll. If you look at the last sentence of the short story. ’’ How to belong to no one.’’ The troll has taught the boy how to be himself, how not be free and be his own boss. I think the troll might be the puberty for our narrator. Whenever he is alone with the troll he can do what he wants to without his family protecting him. He and the troll act differently when his family is not there. And last but not least when the troll is dead and the ’’ puberty ’’ is over the narrator looks back of what they used to do, of how his childhood used to be. But now he is an adult and has to make money the way the troll taught him to.

’’ How to call coins down from the sky. ’’ - P. 3 l. 143.

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