Sailmaker

“Sailmaker” by Alan Spence was written with a strong theme. Spence conveys effectively the theme of hope turning to disillusionment. He does this with sensitive characterisation, an effective structure and powerful symbolism.

The story is set in Glasgow around the 1960s when the ship building industry was declining. It is about a boy who lives wit his parents in a tenement flat. His dad is a “tic man” but used to be a sailmaker. The boy finds a small old yacht in the bed recess in their small home. He asks his dad to fix the yacht up because it has no sails but his father keeps on delaying this. The boy’s uncle paints it for him without delaying but the father never put sails on it. So eventually the boy forgets about it and the yacht goes back to where it came from, the “glory hole”. In the second part of the story, time has moved on. It is a few years later and the family is not doing well because the mother has died and the father is out of a job, spending most of his time drinking or at the betting shop. Soon the boy and his f

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Spence writes “sailmaker” in two parts. It emphasises the contrast between the two jobs. The tools were tools that the father used when he was a sailmaker.

At the start of the story Spence shows us the character of the father. Earlier on in the story there is another symbol of hope fading. When are breaking up and burning their possessions we see sad emotion in the father. As the father keeps delaying it the boy asks him less and less often and has less hope.

Through out the story Alan Spence changes the mood continuously from hope to disillusionment to create the theme. Not only have they lost hope in the yacht but they have lost everything - burnt the symbols of their life at the better times. Spence commented on his father “It was a fine poem my father told me”. When he puts them into the fire this shows his desperation because he needs to sacrifice these important possessions. They find the father’s old tools and the boat, and burn them also. Soon the hope has been lost completely and the boat is no longer part of his life. From when the boy finds it and has great hopes for getting it fixed up, he even dreams of sailing away in the sea to a fantasy land his dad created called “Never Never Land”. This adds to the depressing mood at the end because we feel sorry for him because he is finding it hard to sacrifice everything.

Approximate Word count = 707
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

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