Short Fiction · Chapter
A Son explained
An Academician recounts to a politician and a senator his agonizing return to Pont-Labbé thirty years after a brief, violent encounter with a servant, only to discover she died in childbirth and that her son—a degraded, alcoholic stable han
What happens
An Academician recounts to a politician and a senator his agonizing return to Pont-Labbé thirty years after a brief, violent encounter with a servant, only to discover she died in childbirth and that her son—a degraded, alcoholic stable hand—may be his own. His attempts to confirm or deny the paternity, to help or to distance himself, lead only to obsessive torment and the horrifying realization that he may have killed the mother and ruined the child.
Themes in this chapter
Obsession and Delusion
The Academician's compulsive return to Pont-Labbé, his fruitless search for resemblance, and his torment over the possibility that the stable hand is his son.
Cruelty and Suffering
The brutal rape of the servant, the mother's death in childbirth, and the son's degraded existence as a 'larva of the stable.'
Isolation and Loneliness
The Academician's solitary anguish, unable to share his doubt or embrace his possible son, and the son's utter abandonment.
Characters to notice
- Guy de Maupassant
Narrator of the frame story; present at the dinner where the Academician tells his tale.
- Monsieur Saval
The senator who listens to the Academician's story and reflects on the fate of fatherless children.
- Paul Pavilly
The politician who listens to the Academician and murmurs about the need to think of children without fathers.
Key passages
“I took her brutally, upon the ground, upon the floor.”
He raped the servant girl on the floor.
The Academician confesses the violent act that may have led to the birth of his son.
“I have killed the mother and ruined this atrophied being, larva of the stable, born and bred on a dunghill.”
He believes he caused the mother's death and destroyed the child's life.
The Academician's self-condemnation for the consequences of his actions.
“I have always an unappeasable and painful desire to see him, and the sight of him makes me suffer horribly.”
He is compelled to look at his son, yet the sight causes him intense pain.
The paradoxical obsession that drives the Academician's annual visits.