It’s a peaceful day as sunlight settles onto the fields of the plain. (…)
Source: Dagerman, Stig “To Kill a Child.” In: New York Review of Books. 31 January 2014.
Available at [🔗].
current affairs
The New Yorker article “The sorrow and shame of the accidental killer” discusses the psychological fall-out after accidentally causing a death.
links
Alice Gregory “The sorrow and shame of the accidental killer.” New Yorker, September 2017. [🔗]
questions
This short story was commissioned by the Swedish National Society for Road Safety to discourage speeding. Do you think that it is effective as a piece of social advertisement? What makes it effective?
How do you think blame should be allocated in this situation? Was the death of the child the man’s fault? Does it make a difference whether he was or was not breaking a speed limit? What if there were no speed limit enforced at the time? Is the mother to blame for telling the child to hurry across the road?
The New Yorker article “The sorrow and shame of the accidental killer” talks about the lack of a support network for those who accidentally kill. Why do you think this isolation is so ubiquitous? How is it represented in the Dagerman story?
In Dagerman’s story, we have a mother who tells her child to hurry and a speeding driver. In the New Yorker article we have Maryann Gray and George Weller accidentally killing pedestrians. Is there a difference in their respective levels of culpability?
Is it rational to experience guilt and shame after accidentally killing a person? What would be an appropriate reaction? Is punishment due? How do people come to terms with what they did? How does Maryann Gray find a way to “unburden”?