Uncle Julius scares and traumatizes his nine-year-old nephew in a variety of ways during the short scenes that make up Hemon’s story, “Islands.” His toothless and smelly body, his description of the snakes and mongooses on Mljet, his characterization of the death of his grandfather, his comments about the former pirate island now sporting a…
Tag: Islands
Islands by Aleksandar Hemon – Setting
Bosnia-Herzegovina Given the autobiographical nature of Hemon’s short story collection, and based on details from the story, “Islands” is likely set in the 1970s, a decade of relative prosperity in what is in 2005 BosniaHerzegovina. Hemon wrote the story in the 1990s, having recently emigrated from Bosnia to the United States. In order to understand…
Islands by Aleksandar Hemon – Literary Devices
Short Scenes The fact that “Islands” is made up of thirty-three short scenes is crucial to its storytelling format. Although they combine to form a chronological narrative, these scenes are like brief glimpses into specific moments of the narrator’s childhood, or individual islands of memory that can seem somewhat distinct. In fact, some of the…
Islands by Aleksandar Hemon – Themes
Memory Partly because it is the first story in an autobiographical collection of fiction from the perspective of a Bosnian immigrant to the United States, there is the sense that “Islands” is a journey into childhood memory from the standpoint of an adult. The story’s short scenes are like islands of memory that combine to…
Islands by Aleksandar Hemon – Characters
Father The narrator’s father makes no individual appearances in the story but is grouped together with his mother. They are not neglectful parents, which is clear from the narrator’s description of how specific they are in their rules about when and for how long he can swim, but their son tends not to notice them….
Islands by Aleksandar Hemon – Summary
Scenes 1–5 “Islands” begins with the young unnamed narrator driving with his family from Sarajevo to the coast, where they take a ship to the island of Mljet, which is part of the neighboring state of Croatia. On the ship, the narrator loses his hat in the wind and, realizing he will never see it…