The Short-Story 'the Raft' by Peter Orner

"My grandfather, who lost his short-term memory sometime during the first Eisenhower Administration, calls me into his study because he wants to tell me the story he's never told anybody before, again."

This is how the short-story 'The Raft' by Peter Orner begins. A story that witnesses a conversation between a 12-year-old boy and his grandfather, who captain a destroyer during World War 2.

I will mainly focus on the relationship between the grandfather and his grandson, and on how the grandfather's traumatic story effects them both.

The boy has heard the story many times before, but this time it is somehow different. The boy is turning 13 in two weeks, which is a big step. He is a teenager growing up to be a man. By that he will receive more responsibility, he will see the world with different eyes and learn how to make his own choices in life. This effects the boy's undestanding of the story, but also the fact that the grandfather draws the boy into the closet. This makes an impact, as he says:

"And I see now that it's not how many times you hear a story but where you hear it that mattered"

The part where the boy sits in the dark closet with his grandfather, who tells the story with tears running down his face, is very pronunced. Before, in the studio the boy would just be the listener, but in the closet he feels like they are it is a confession, where he should be the one with the power to forgive.

It is difficult for the young boy to be placed in that position. Several times he asks the grandfather why he dit what he did, and the grandfather just sighs, unabel to explain. He starts murmuring about how people would lie to you and tries to justify himself by asking what else he could have done. In critical situations it can be difficult to uphold moral and values, but afterwards your actions will haunt you. It is these actions that keep the grandfather unabel to move on - makes him try to undestand and justify the fact that he is now responsible for several innocent people's death.

"Just because men like me made the world safe for men like your father to be cowards doesn't mean you won't blow up civilians"

The grandfather knows that what he did was wrong, and yet he tries to argue for his actions - he is contradicting himself. This line also metions the boy's father in a non-friendly tone. The grandfather calls him a coward, probably because the father did not go to war, like he did. By that he says, that even though he did something wrong, he still did something for the 'world peace' (unlike the boy's father.) He makes a childish attempt of seeming like a hero.

The grandfather regrets his actions and the way he thought during the war.

""Japs"