Here’s Herbie- stil PDF

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Here’s Herbie- stil. Fik 10 med pil op. ...

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Here’s Herbie Most people have a monotonous routine. In the story “Here’s Herbie” by Mike Feder (1988), the routine in the fifteen-year-old boy’s life is to take a bus to the subway and then the F train into Manhattan. The theme in the narration is a boy’s feeling of being embarrassed to be staring out of the window of a train because it would look extremely uncool, to stand up there as an imbecile. A boy steps into the train and causes difficulties by saying his name “Herbie” in a very loud voice. The other boy denounced him immediately. Despite his hatred for him it appears that Herbie will have a positive effect on the boy’s feeling of being ashamed to be staring out of the window of the train later on. “Here’s Herbie” is about a fifteen-year-old boy’s fear of being ashamed by looking out of the window in a train and his miserable life at home with his sick mum who always complains about him. In the train, he runs into a guy called Herbie who is, according to the boy, a retard. Herbie goes to the train’s front window, which the boy did not dare to do, stuck a steering wheel on the window and steered the train. Even though he could crash he drove with no doubts. Towards the end of the story, after having went to an allergist, the boy gets depressed because he saw Herbie drive the train and that got to him. He realises that life is passing him by and he still has plenty of things he wants to do, but never has done. Therefore, he decides to walk over to the front window of the train and looks out. While the train is driving, he feels responsible for the people sitting in the train and that their lives depend on him. During the drive he saw another train passing by and he identified the driver as Herbie. The story ends very surprisingly by the boy and Herbie striking up a friendship, and therefore the story has a surprise ending. This can also be seen as a plot twist because their friendship comes as a surprise to the readers. The story is told in first person narrator by the boy. For instance, this can be seen when he looks back on his childhood in the following quote, “When I was a kid, there wasn’t all that much violence” (p. 3, l. 22). The narrator in the story is quite unreliable because the narration is affected by the boy’s opinions and his view on everything. Therefore, it is hard to determine whether he is reliable or not. The story is written from the boy’s perspective and not in the third

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person points of view. The story might have looked different if it was told from Herbie’s point of view because he might have a different approach to the things. The main character is a fifteen-year-old boy, who is a complex character because we get more and more information about him through his actions and thoughts in the story. He is ashamed of looking out of the front of the train. For example, this can be seen when he describes the above-mentioned problem in the following quote, “I felt it would be embarrassing, extremely uncool, to stand up there like some jerkoff and just be staring out of the window of the train” (p. 3, ll. 36-37). He is very pessimistic about Herbie’s rude behaviour in the beginning. He is also depressed of not being able to drive the train. During the story decreases his hate for Herbie, which can be seen in following quote, “And I saw Herbie driving the other way and I felt a comradeship with some of the greatest men that have ever lived” (p. 6, ll. 133-134). This quote also shows that he sees Herbie as his friend. The train is a symbol of freedom, responsibility and pleasure. For the boy is the feeling of driving the train better than sex, which indicates the importance of it. For instance, this can be seen in the following quote, “It was like the feeling the first sperm has” (p. 5, l. 107). The reason that you feel responsibility is that you are in charge of the train. The boy feels freedom because he had been in total command of his life. The train is also a symbol of the boy and Herbie’s friendship given that it all started in a train. In conclusion, the hatred of Herbie ends up being a beginning of a friendship between the boy and Herbie. From the beginning we get the impression that the boy and Herbie are two different people, but they actually end up being similar to each other.

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