 Hello and welcome to summary of what you need to know about The Stoat by John McGurr-Hearn. I'll explain the meaning of this story as it appears in Stories of Ourselves, the University of Cambridge International Examination's anthology of short stories in English. I'll begin with some context about the author of this story before explaining the plot in a nutshell. I'll explain the characters that you should be aware of in the story, then I'll highlight the important themes that you should consider when studying this text. Bear in mind that we do have a Stories of Ourselves course that goes into depth on these stories so do make sure you also sign up for a course. So let's get started. Now, when it comes to context, John McGurr-Hearn was born in 1934 and he died in 2006. He is a native of Dublin, Ireland and his lyrical portraits of Ireland and Astonisans earned him a reputation as one of the country's most eminent writers of his generation. McGurr-Hearn grew up in the northwest part of Ireland and he was the first of seven children in his family. He was devoted to his mother, a former teacher and devastated by her death from cancer when he was nine. The remainder of his youth was marked by hardship. For a time, he and his siblings lived with a brutish father, a police sergeant and veteran of Ireland's 1919 to 1921 War of Independence and McGurr-Hearn resisted his father's determination to pull him out of school so that he might learn a trade. As a young man, he taught in school and took classes at the University College of Dublin. John McGurr-Hearn in 1957 graduated and began writing short stories while still keeping his teaching job. However, he was forced out of his job after his second novel, The Dark, caused a sensation and a controversy when it appeared in 1965. McGurr-Hearn spent the next few years living abroad and later settled down on a piece of land in County Laetrim in Ireland. For the remainder of his life, McGurr-Hearn farmed, wrote and took the occasional visiting professorship at universities. So now let's look at the story of the stout. Now, the story takes place near Strand Hill, a coastal village in Ireland where a witted teacher vacations with a son. When the son is out golfing, he stumbles upon a dying rabbit that had been hunted down by a stout. The stout slithers away, but the boy in an act of mercy kills the rabbit and takes it with him, all the while being followed by the stout. The boy takes the rabbit to the father who doubts whether the evening guest, Miss McCabe, will enjoy the rabbit. He then goes into memory, a flashback, as the boy remembers how the father asks for his son's approval, so for his approval, to remarry and afterwards sent out ads to widowed women who sought companionship with him. The father, ridiculed for searching, still had many people, many women, replying to his ad. Now, during this time, the son grew closer and closer with the uncle, the father's brother, and was planning to live with him instead of his father as he found his father dull and his uncle's ideology and morals better. Now, the story then skips to the son and Miss McCabe meeting, which, despite not going very smoothly, entered through the son actually liking her and approving of his father's marriage, which she claims he would have done so even if he'd not liked Miss McCabe. Now, Miss McCabe had rheumatism and the son's father needed a walking stick. Though old, they sought companionship for another, but that very next day, after dinner, they had the rabbit. Miss McCabe had a mild heart attack in the salt baths. Now, the boy's father now revealed to be an escapist, just like his son, immediately packs his things to leave, as he doesn't want to suffer the pain and loss of losing another woman in his life. The son wanting to leave his boring life with the father takes the chance to leave for his uncle's and the story ends with a passage on how parenting is a complicated activity, in a way it suggests that the father in the story has come short in teaching his son to actively and properly pursue the challenges and pain of life. In the end, the stout killing the rabbit is an allegory of life, the stout is death, and the rabbit is people. You can try to escape the stout, you can try to escape death, but it will continue to pursue you until there's no other end than death. Now, when it comes to the characters, the first is the boy. So the boy who's a story's protagonist is a student pursuing medicine in university. We learn he has a close relationship with his uncle, whose path he followed in spite of his own father wanting him to work as a banker. We learn that he and his father have a somewhat distant relationship, his mother died, and his father, who's now older, wants to just remarry simply for companionship. The other character is the father, so he's a 52-year-old schoolteacher and a widower who's somewhat discontent with his job, however he'll probably not leave as he's a comfortable position as a principal in this school. However, we learn that the father is quite lonely and he decides to put out an ad in a newspaper to find a woman to remarry for companionship in old age. However, he has very high standards and many women that he meets from this ad don't really meet this criteria and he's somewhat more envious of the relationship that his son has with his own brother and he actively seeks his son's approval. The other character is the uncle, so the uncle has a very close relationship with the boy, the protagonist. The setting also, when the two go for a long walk after dinner, depicts a beautiful nature showing the uncle the relationship, or rather showing the nature of the relationship between the son and the uncle. Their relationship really blossoms gently. Now the fact that the protagonist chooses to become a doctor like a surgeon uncle, going against his father's wishes of becoming a banker, shows the increase in closeness and also the reason of the distance the father has with the uncle. Yet the uncle doesn't actually feel that much empathy for his own brother, he mocks the boy's father for seeking a companion and putting an ad to look for women in the newspaper. Therefore the uncle's relationship with his brother is quite strange which probably pushed the father to look for someone because their familiar ties were broken. Also we learned that the uncle is somewhat boastful and arrogant, he wants to essentially be a big wig in a small town. The other important character is the stote. It's described thus, it's slithered like a snake to quote from the passage. It has sneaky, cunning, slithering connotations. This reminds us as readers of the tale of Adam and Eve and the sly encounter with the snake and this biblical connotation emphasizes the manipulative nature of human beings. Also the stote felt ownership over the prey, the rabbit, as it continued to and to quote from the passage, follow the rabbit still and the boy twice glimpsed the stote behind him. Now this is a really primitive scene of prey versus predator and this is further emphasized with the jungle setting of the story. Thus the stote acts as a late motif for death and the stote mocks down his prey and like death the stote is inescapable. Now when it comes to themes of the story the first is of death. So the stote killing the rabbit is a symbol of death and the protagonist's death and mother as well as McCabe's heart attack shows death is ever present. The father of this boy fears the prospect of death and thus decides to end his relationship abruptly with Miss McCabe as he fears the specter of death and the end of the story is also interesting as McGurhan repeats the beginning paragraph. Also this repetition may be important as McGurhan could be suggesting that just as the stote will kill again so too symbolically with the protagonist's father. Just as stote has killed the rabbit the protagonist's father has killed off his relationship with Miss McCabe and he may do so with any other woman that doesn't match his strict criteria that he set out. The other theme is selfishness so the protagonist's father on hearing that Miss McCabe had a heart attack decides to abandon any notions he had of getting engaged to Miss McCabe. It says though the protagonist's father doesn't want to care for Miss McCabe should the need arise and this may be important as it suggests that the protagonist's father is being selfish thinking only of his own feelings rather than on how Miss McCabe misfeal. The other theme is that of honesty. The father is not honest with Miss McCabe he doesn't take responsibility for his actions it would be more appropriate for him to be honest with Miss McCabe rather than simply abandoning her without any type of explanation. Not only is the protagonist's father acting selfishly but he's also avoiding having to tell Miss McCabe as to why he no longer has any interest in seeking her or getting engaged. His actions lack any type of honesty. Another theme is that of rejection so though the protagonist's father is looking for companionship he also seems to be looking for perfection yet he is not able to offer this himself. As a man he's flawed he's rejected and abandoned Miss McCabe for no other reason apart from the fact that she had a heart attack. The standard that the protagonist's father has set and which many women have not been able to attain in all possibility may not actually be realistic and the protagonist's father himself has very little to offer yet he rejects most of the women he meets. So that's all if you found the summary video useful do make sure you sign up for our stories of ourselves course but also check out our website which is www.firstretutors.com where you can find plenty of other English revision worksheets, model answers and online courses covering all the major syllabuses including edXL, AQA and IGCSE. Thanks so much for watching.