Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on contemporary literature. In this essay, Aubrey discusses characterization and narrative technique in “Last Courtesies.”

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” wrote W. B. Yeats in “The Second Coming,” and these lines might serve as an epigraph for Leffland's story, “Last Courtesies.” The story is at once a lament for a vanishing world of civility and an intriguing character study. It is also a carefully crafted story, with well disguised ironies, that reaches a climax worthy of a suspense thriller.

Conflict between the older and the younger generations is hardly a new theme in literature or in life. The world is always changing, and change can be disturbing to those who have become set in their ways. The physical energy of the young, their unwillingness to accept...