Snowdrops

Snowdrops by Leslie Norris is a short story about a six year-old boy who wants to go and see the snowdrops (flowers). It is essentially a story about grief from the perspective of this boy. Your typical six year-old, he is very observant and curious, but also very naive and his life is very sheltered. At school, he and his peers are unable to grasp the idea of emotional pain and whilst they know that something is the matter with their teacher, Miss Webster, they cannot work out what. The boy knows Miss Webster to be rather tough as thinking pain as only physical, mentions that 'she had trapped [her finger] in the cupboard and hadn't cried'. Because of this inability to understand the depth of Miss Webster's emotional pain from the death of her boyfriend, the children are shocked and frightened at the end of the story when she breaks down crying.
Overall, I quite enjoyed the story. The author did a great job of capturing the boy's innocence and clearly shows the sharp contrast between childhood and the adult world. The snowdrops are probably the most significant of symbols in the story, representing the fragility of humans. The boy's ignorance of grief is particularly evident when he looks at the snowdrops and 'felt a slow, sad disappointment', unable to understand the flowers.