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Grief and loss in Telling Tales — theme analysis

Telling Tales · Graham Swift, D. H. Lawrence, Helen Dunmore, John McGahern, Kazuo Ishiguro, Claudette Williams and Penelope Lively · Set text on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702) — Modern texts option; not on Pearson Edexcel International GCSE (4ET1) · Grade 9 Notes

In one sentence. Every story contains a death or a loss, and most are about what the living do with grief: hide it, turn it into anger, or let it change how they see.

Build your reading of grief and loss in Telling Tales, teach it to an AI pupil, then defend it in a marked debate — this study carries all three.

How grief and loss works in Telling Tales

‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ is the collection's fullest study of grief. Elizabeth's anger at an absent husband becomes fear, then shock, then a terrible recognition that she never knew him. Lawrence sets her silent grief beside her mother-in-law's open weeping, and neither is simply right. In ‘Chemistry’ grief is a household's whole atmosphere, and the boy's final vision at the pond is his way of refusing to accept that his grandfather is gone.

Grief can turn to cruelty. In ‘The Darkness Out There’ Mrs Rutter's loss of her husband becomes her reason for leaving a young enemy airman to die. In ‘A Family Supper’ the mother's death and Watanabe's killings hang over the meal. In ‘Invisible Mass of the Back Row’ Hortense's grief for Cousy and for home sits inside a story about leaving.

Pairings that work

  • ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ with ‘Chemistry’: two households changed by a death, two women's grief judged by others.
  • ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ with ‘The Darkness Out There’: two women whose response to loss the story asks us to judge.
  • ‘A Family Supper’ with ‘Chemistry’: two deaths by poison that the stories refuse to explain.

The characters who carry grief and loss

An essay on grief and loss is built from the characters. Each line below is from that character's own study — follow it for the full analysis.

Essays on grief and loss in Telling Tales

How do writers present grief in ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ and one other story?

Thesis: ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ and ‘Chemistry’ show grief that is complicated by anger and relief, and both refuse to judge their grieving women simply.

  1. Odour: the waiting and the anger; the chrysanthemums as the marriage's history.
  2. Odour: the news, the body in the parlour, and the two women's different grief.
  3. Odour: the epiphany of separateness, and submission to life. Context: a mining family's dependence and danger.
  4. Chemistry: the sinking launch, Mother's choice, the shed and the verdict.
  5. Chemistry: Mother's relief, the father's sweater, and the final vision at the pond.

Thesis statements that argue it

  • ‘Chemistry’ and ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ show grief that does not look like grief, and ask the reader not to judge it too quickly.

Think you understand it?

Reading is the start. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it — the two things a revision guide cannot ask of you.

Incandio this topic → Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. What does “Incandio it” mean?

  1. Teach it — Explain your reading of grief and loss in Telling Tales to Ember, an AI pupil who has not made one, and answer the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
  2. Defend it — Hold your reading of grief and loss in Telling Tales against the writer in a short, structured debate marked against descriptors you can read first.
  3. Then the exam — exam-style practice, marked on Incandio.

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