Yaksox, I think you're spot on with the wretchedness. Much of the lack of forward movement that listeners are reacting to is, I think, story space given over to the creation of a detailed atmosphere of wretchedness. My girlfriend put this story in a subgenre that really gets to her: stories where pathetic protagonists are set up to lose the one thing they're still living for. This is subgenre isn't limited to horror, but the horror genre does suit it in this case, I think. Part of what attracted me to translating this story were its very traditional qualities. It's a single-minded sort of tale, solid and economical, with everything pointing toward the end. Much of Owen's work would not be, I think, out of place in Alfred Hitchcock presents. Stories where the main character dies are probably more common in horror than other genres, but I like how this one delays the supernatural element till the end. So is Kavar actually crushed, or fulfilled? His death is handled obliquely, poetically. The narration establishes a slight but strange distance from him early on, too, and continues after his death onto what to me are details of eerie dispassion: the fly, the cat.
