Heynen's 'What Happened During The Ice Storm'

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“What Happened During the Ice Storm” is at a superficial level a story about boys who, during an ice storm head outside to kill some pheasants for their supper, instead they feel sorry for the cold, frozen birds, and lend them their coats. However, by looking beneath the surface, we see Heynen conveying that the naivety of children needs to be removed in order to enable children to grow up which is a key element in pushing one 's moral boundaries. Heynen’s theme of overcoming naivety is portrayed though passing down traditions from father to son. During the storm the fathers went out “with clubs to harvest the pheasants that sat helplessly in the roadside ditches.” (1) The boys also went out in the “freezing rain” to also find some pheasants to ‘harvest’, but unlike the farmers they had brought no sacks or clubs nothing but themselves. When the other farmers clubbed the cold and helpless pheasants, the boys took a different approach at the situation at hand. Heynen also conveys overcoming naivety when he writes “they saw dark spots along the fence”. (1) The fence is a symbol of a wall that the boys have to climb over in order free themselves of the weight of tradition and expectation. It is also evident that it is human nature follow in the footsteps of what someone did before us, but sometimes there comes a time when you have to make your own decisions, and that is ‘going on the path less traveled by.’ Another way the author imparted overcoming naivety is by making a

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