Family Relationships In Claire Keegan's Storms

The patterns or interactions between different types of relationships even family ones show that there are different types of dynamics. Every power dynamic is different and unique in its own way. No matter how close or distant the relationship’s parties are they are always influenced by their surroundings and what is portrayed around them. In her short story “Storms” Claire Keegan manipulates the theme of cruelty in order to explore power and family dynamics in a relationship.

Some power in relationships are shown by the way one person in the relationship influences all the other people in the relationship. In her short story “Storms” Keegan makes us realize that the influential person in the relationship is the father and he keeps the other

She realizes that the only place she can escape the arguments between her mother and father and the fact that her mother could not like her was to hide in the metal chest that is when she says “that’s when I started going into the dairy without reason. It was quiet enough room, nothing only the wind and the gurgling of the water tank overhead”. (Keegan, 74). Once she realizes that she is nothing else to her mother but a constant reminder of her father that’s when she decides to stay away from both of them all together and that is when she turned the chest into her little hide away from them. The dairy is also a symbol because she uses it to show that Ellen was happy to disappear form the issues with her parents and she found her sanity when she hid in the box and to the reader she pretends not to exist but to her she really thinks she is non-existent this is shown when she says “Everything turns black. It is as if I no longer exist. It’s not me sitting on the damp books inside a big, black tin”. (Keegan, 74). Keegan also shows that due to this event she loses sense of the reality going on around

Cruelty is a very prevalent part of this story and it helps readers understand the symbol of the dairy and how cruelty was the reason for her going to the dairy and also how the factors abuse, helplessness and fear were also ways that lead to the cruelty they had to encounter. These types of situations are the ones that go on around the world where women are always put under a lot of pressure because they don’t know how to get back on their feet and it seems like Claire Keegan realizes that not only in her short story “Storms” but it come up again in her short story “Quare Name For a Boy” and it is shown because it seems like she wants her female characters to take charge of their own lives and stop living for men. From reading her stories she seems to be very big on