Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on twentieth-century literature. In this essay, Aubrey examines "A Great Day" in light of Sargeson's use of violence in his short stories and his ideal of male friendship.

"A Great Day" is an unusual story. Even its appearance on the page is unusual. Although it has plenty of dialogue, it has no quotation marks. This is a feature of all Sargeson's stories, one that started a trend that many serious writers in New Zealand followed in the 1940s. Perhaps the reason Sargeson adopted this technique was to give his stories a nonliterary, artless quality, a feeling of greater naturalness. He wanted to give the reader the feeling that he or she is eavesdropping on a real conversation, not one filtered through the work of an intermediary, the writer. (This is, of course, an illusion, since...