The Stoat Summary

While golfing, the narrator comes across a rabbit that a stoat has fatally wounded. The narrator imagines how the rabbit must have desperately fled from the stoat before finally giving up and awaiting its doom. He kills the rabbit to put it out of its misery, before finishing up his game and heading home to the cottage his father rents every August in Strandhill. The narrator takes the dead rabbit with him, so the stoat follows him along the way.

When the narrator gets back to the cottage, his father is looking for people he knows in the death notices in the newspaper, something he does frequently. His father asked him to come to Strandhill with him and his girlfriend, Miss McCabe, to make their vacation together seem more proper as well as to seek the narrator’s approval of her. Miss McCabe and his father plan to get engaged if the vacation goes well. The narrator finds his supervision of his father and Miss McCabe’s courtship odd, but he agreed, nevertheless. He was originally planning to spend the summer in Dublin with his uncle, who is a surgeon, doing postgraduate work.

All of this started because last summer, his father decided he wanted to remarry—the narrator’s mother having died some time ago—and posted an advertisement in the newspaper to find a new wife. He asked the narrator if he minded before he did this, and the narrator said he didn’t. The ad received many replies, and the narrator’s father met all of the women in different hotel lounges, finding them overall very disappointing except for one woman he deemed to be a decent person: Miss McCabe. When the narrator met Miss McCabe the first time, he found her nervous and frail, but he told his father that he thought she was nice.

When the narrator last visited his uncle, he’d laughed at the narrator’s father’s method of finding a wife. His uncle, whom the narrator both admires and finds intimidating, had suggested that the narrator’s father bored the narrator’s mother to death, but the narrator defended his father. His uncle suggested that at least the narrator’s father would leave the narrator alone if he got remarried, but the narrator replied that he was used to his father.

Thus far, the vacation has gone on for a week without a hitch. The narrator and his father have had several casual outings with Miss McCabe, who is staying in a nearby hotel, but tonight she’ll visit the cottage for the first time. The narrator’s father doesn’t know how to cook, so the narrator makes dinner. Miss McCabe dresses up and hangs onto every word the narrator’s father says, but she eats and drinks very little. Despite her enthusiasm for his admiration of the sea, the narrator’s father finds her comments concerning and once again asks the narrator what he thinks of her after she leaves. The narrator again tells him that he approves of Miss McCabe.

That night, Miss McCabe has a minor heart attack, causing the narrator’s father to decide she is not the one for him. He decides to leave Strandhill before having to interact with her again. The narrator realizes his father is like the rabbit, running from something he cannot escape. He is ashamed of his father, and as he watches him drive away, he once again images the rabbits flight and ultimate demise.