Abduction Case

Abduction is a short story written by Shelagh Delaney in 2002. The story takes place in Manchester and London, England. The story is told by a sibling (L. 35 - "He'd been born late in our parents' marriage") of the two central characters, the youngest brother and their sister Ann. The narrator is sitting on Manchester Piccadilly Station waiting for the train to London. He's thinking about humiliating and killing his sister because she indirectly killed their youngest brother. (LL. 1-8)

Ann was always very proud of herself (L. 13) and she wanted to be a paediatrician, so when she got offered a job in London she couldn't get out of Manchester fast enough (LL. 23-25). She lived for her work (L. 20) and was very wealthy; she lived the life she'd always wanted (L. 31). Her much younger brother had just left school, had no qualifications or job, and didn't have much confidence in his parents. His sister though had all the answers and it wasn't hard to get him to go away with her (LL. 36-41). Ann spend a lot of her time taking care of her younger brother trying to make him happy. She just didn't realize that her own values were different than her brother's. To her, happiness was career and money; while her brother's most important value was to have a happy family. When the brother's drinking problem was becoming official she didn't try to help him but instead bought the alcohol for him so he wouldn't have to steal it (LL. 105-106). The narrator thinks that Ann killed their brother by taking everything he loved away from him and thereby driving him insane. This lead to the large amount of alcohol he had to drink to get away from reality and which ended up killing him in the end.

This short story is comparable to the song "Mother" by Siouxsie and the Banshees because both stories contains a motherly figure which thinks she's giving the child love when she is actually suffocating the child by enslaving and shaping it after how she thinks it should be and act like. According to Siouxsie and the Banshees mothers think they are protective when they actually are stunting the child's mind (stanza 2). You're expected to love your mother and if you don't, you feel so bad for hating her, that you want to please her in every possible way (stanza 1 and 6). She'll try to turn you in to a copy of herself and if you're about to escape her claws, she'll twist the words you speak - or in "Abduction" try to buy your love (stanza 2 and 4).

"Downstairs I don't know

Why I feel safe in my bed

When I know I'm alone

She must be watching overhead

Mother" (Stanza 8)

This shows us that the mother figure sees and knows