Graham Greene’s novel called ”A Shocking Accident” tells a story about a student boy, Jerome, who hears bad news from his housemaster. His housemaster, Mr Wordsworth, let him know that his father has been in a street accident, in Naples. In the first part of the novel, Mr Wordsworth says that the accident was really serious, and to be exact, Jerome’s father had died yesterday. Jerome don’t react normally to that kind of news, instead of a huge sorrow and sadness Jerome is extremely calm. Jerome assumes that his father died by a hit of a bullet, but he is wrong. Mr Wordsworth tells that Jerome’s father died because a pig fell on him. Jerome’s father was walking along a street in Nepal, when suddenly the pig fell from a balcony.

In the second part of novel, the storyteller describes the character of Jerome: he is not a crybaby, he is a person who keeps his feelings inside his head. When Jerome tells about this mysterious story to his best friend, his schoolmates give a nickname to Jerome, ”Pig”. Jerome’s aunt is very sad about her brother’s death and tells every kind of heroic stories about him, to everyone.

The time goes by, and Jerome finds a girl, Sally, and they became engaged to married. Now, when Jerome is going to be a father by himself, he realizes how much he misses his own father. Jerome tells falsely to Sally, what happened to his father. Jerome didn’t want to take Sally to see his aunt, but it happens right before the wedding. Sally hears the thruth of the accident and is horrified. Jerome, instead, is happy about Sally’s reaction: he has been scared all the time that Sally would have laughed to the real, truthful story, and stopped loving Jerome. Jerome realizes that Sally really loves him and the story has a happy ending. In my point of view, the short story teaches that if somebody honestly cares about you, she or he will love you no matter what.

Written by satc