“Stolen Day” is a short autobiographical piece by Sherwood Anderson that appeared as a chapter in Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs from 1942 under the title “Big Fish”. The section was excerpted as a short story and published in 1941 under the title “Stolen Day”, and that’s usually how it appears now. It’s about a boy with an active imagination who doesn’t want to go to school, and the resulting plan he comes up with. Here’s a summary of “Stolen Day”.
“Stolen Day” Summary
A boy on the narrator’s street, Walter, doesn’t have to go to school because he has inflammatory rheumatism. He can walk around, though, and he spends his days fishing. One spring day walking to school, he sees Walter sitting there fishing.
The narrator’s back and legs start aching. At recess he cries and tells the teacher about it and she sends him home. He limps until he’s out of sight of the school and then feels better. He has inflammatory rheumatism but figures he shouldn’t tell anyone. His family might laugh at him and he doesn’t know all the symptoms. He wants to ask Walter, but he’s not at the fishing spot.
Only his mother and two youngest siblings are home. He lounges on the front step until his mother comes out. He complains of his aches and she sends him up to bed.
He remembers his Dad saying inflammatory rheumatism affected the heart and worries he might suddenly die. When he raced his brother the day before, his heart was beating really fast. He could have died, which scares him.
The boy only stays in bed an hour or two. He feels better and goes downstairs. His mother is busy working and doesn’t pay much attention to him. He starts to ache again. He sits on the front porch again, feeling sorry for himself.
He decides to go fishing. He imagines his heart stopping and falling into the water and drowning. He remembers when one of the Wyatt children drowned in a spring. His mother found him and ran down the street with him in her arms to the Wyatt’s. He imagines the town searching for him and dragging the pond.
The boy gets his fishing pole unnoticed and heads for the pool. He doesn’t sit too close to the edge. He gets a bite really fast and knows it’s one of Mr. Fenn’s big carp that got into the creek when his dam broke. The boy gets into the pool as he wrestles with it. He manages to throw it onto the bank.
With one hand under the gills, he runs with it all the way home. Mother puts it in a washtub full of water and the neighbors come to look at it. He’s a big hero for catching such a large fish.
At the supper table, he makes a mistake. His Father met the teacher on the street and she told him he had to go home. He asks his son what was wrong. Without thinking, the boy blurts out that he had inflammatory rheumatism. Everyone laughs at him. He feels sick and aches again.
He cries and declares that he does have it. He runs upstairs and stays there until Mother comes up. He knows it will be a long time until he’s heard the last of inflammatory rheumatism. He’s still sick, but the aching isn’t in his back or legs.
I hope this summary of “Stolen Day” by Sherwood Anderson was helpful.
