Emotions are a powerful force that fuels human society.

It pushes people to make

changes in their lives and the lives of others. Of all emotions, grief is perhaps the most
unproductive, placing a sudden halt on all the aspects of a person's life for a time of
deep sadness to take control. Gina Berriault's short story entitled "The Stone Boy",
follows the story of a nine-year-old boy named Arnold, facing the aftermath of a terrible
accident and trying to understand his responsibility in the matter. This essay will be
focusing on several important topics that should be discussed including the death of a
family member, failure, and identity, the analysis of the different elements of the story,
and how the way Arnold's family neglects him can affect him in the future along with
social norms and being able to learn and mature in different ways, and change
worldviews after going through a life-changing event.

This story displays how people react to changes and how people develop from them. It
is in omniscient narration as it is told by a third-person narrator. The structure of this
prose is in chronical order, which means it starts from the beginning to the end and
does not jump in time. The story takes place in the 1950s when the family lives in the
countryside outside of the city of Corinth, Mississippi. The family is old-fashioned and to
survive they hunt and collect food in nature. In the first few lines of the story, the sense
of the relationship between Arnold and Eugie is exposed. Arnold was six years younger
than Eugie and the relationship between verified this fact. The two brothers share the
same room and it looks like Arnold looks up to his older brother because he tries to
resemble his brother as shown in this text, "Arnold never tired of watching Eugie offer
silent praise unto himself. He wondered as he sat enthralled if when he got to be
Eugie’s age he would still be undersized and his hair still straight." One morning, Arnold
and his older brother Eugie set out to pick some peas and potentially shoot ducks.
While climbing to a fence near a lake, Arnold's gun got stuck and in an attempt to
untangle it, he use his strength and accidentally fires a shot, he ends up shooting his
older brother. The unexpected thing is that, instead of going back home and
immediately informing his parents about what happened, he stays in the field and
starting to pick peas, "He picked from the top of the vine first, then lifted the vine to look
underneath for pods and then moved on to the next.". Because of his actions towards
the death of his brother, everybody would think that he is a cold-blooded boy or a stone
boy. When the sun has fully risen, Arnold returns to the house without his brother
resulting the confusion between his parents and sister. He tells them that Eugie is dead.
At first, they don’t believe him, but they go down to the lake and find the body. As they
realized what happened to their son, they had immediately started treating Arnold as an
outsider. Throughout the day he was continued to be ignored and shamed by not only
his parents but other family and friends as well instead of being comforted. While family
and the undertaker gather at the house, Arnold retreats to the barn. Later that day
Arnold was brought to the sheriff by his dad and his Uncle Andy, his mother's brother.
The sheriff asks Arnold a series of questions including why he had the gun in the first
place and if he had a “good relationship” with his elder brother. Then he wants to know
why Arnold did not report the shooting immediately, but Arnold has no answer. The
sheriff instill the idea of Arnold being moron or reasonable person that is ahead of them.
Finally, the sheriff concludes that Arnold is either stupid or a boy with no feelings, but he
believes in the latter.

People turn worse towards Arnold because of the accident that causes his brother,
Eugie, to die. His uncle, Andy, is truly mad at him because Andy favors Eugie and Eugie
resembles him a lot. To express his anger, he does not show any concern or sympathy
to his little nephew but excessively expresses his madness by starring at him. Arnold's
in