In the Heart of the Rotting Slum

Spiro Athanas “A Bag of Oranges” is a short story about a young Greek boy who deals with being a foreigner. The reader learns about the boy’s daily routine.

Together with his father Stavro the boy named Nikos buys some things including a bag of oranges at a market. They go home by bus and meet the rest of the family so that the reader gets to know something about their family life. In the end something surprising happens to the father.

Since the story is written in third-person limited perspective everything that happens unexpectedly for the boy also happens unexpectedly for the reader. This causes - even though just light - suspense. The plot is rather boring and chronologically sequenced. There’s one flashback in the short story: on the seventh page Nikos tells about “Aunt” Aphrodite, who is a fortune teller. Aphrodite herself is a little bit lost in the story. She forecasts that something bad will happen and it actually does in the end of the story but the author dedicates her only a few sentences. The setting doesn’t play an important role; the city in which the story takes place could be any city in the world except a Greek city obviously because the Greek family is foreign in this country.

Nikos, the main character, is ten years old. He is innocent, shy and naive, which is appropriate for his age. This is shown for example by the way he describes the market as “a magic farm indomitably growing and prospering in the heart of the rotting slum.” The boy’s character is very dynamic and his thoughts and feelings change a lot according to the change in the story. At first, he tells the reader that he is proud of his father but as the father acts in an embarrassing way in the bus when he tries to pick up the oranges Nikos had lost before and the people in the bus laugh at them he feels ashamed and says that he hates him. But later he realizes how stupid it was of him to say this and he explains how much he loves his father no matter what other people think of him.

Stavro is placid and proud of his nation. The way he greets his daughter when he comes home and how he treats his son shows that he is a loving father.

All in all, the short story is well written and the characters are round. However, the story itself is a bit confusing because you can’t really figure out the main theme when reading it for the first time. Do you share my opinion?