I read this particular story and it has been bugging my mind ever since. I really would like to hear what you all think about the story. What is the story really about and what is the meaning behind it?

It's one of my favourite stories in Smoke and Mirrors. As far as I'm concerned, it's about loneliness above anything else. The troll is a tragic figure because he's so lonely, but the narrator also doesn't seem to be able to connect to anything or anyone in his life. In a way, he offers the troll the opportunity of escaping his loneliness, while he comes to embody his own alienation fully by becoming the troll. There's an element of self-sacrifice there, perhaps.

But all of this doesn't really come close to how touching the story is. It's just waffling about the story - the story itself is much, much stronger in my opinion.

Really? I interpreted in another way! I thought the story is about certain things being more important than prolonging your life.

Because all throughout the story the narrator chose to love himself more than what he could have had, and ended up being miserable. Like he chose to save himself under the bridge the second time he met the troll and offered lousie instead. Even though he managed to keep his life, he lost something perhaps more important instead.

I must admit that it's been a couple of years since I read the story, so I may be misremembering. But isn't the ending him going to the troll and basically offering himself up? It's something between a selfless act (his first, perhaps, because he's a pretty selfish git) and suicide (he's ending his life as it was before).

Yes your memory of the ending is correct but I certainly did not think he gave his life to the troll because he was trying to be selfless, rather because he had lost everything and he has nothing left.

I think there's both. There's definite sorrow and compassion for the troll in the narration, which is focalised through the narrator (if I remember correctly). He could kill himself and end things that way, but he doesn't. I would say that the text definitely suggest a selfless element to the narrator's act of giving himself up to the troll. He may not be 100% conscious of it, mind you.

I kinda thought he sympathized with the troll because he, unconsciously, knew they were the same. giving the troll another chance at life where he had failed was, in effect, giving himself a new start. he was always the troll, and the troll was always him. as such, it isn't so much selfless as it is self-aware and desperate.

and, on another level, I think the troll represents his selfishness. when he gives himself to the troll, he abandons himself to the selfishness that has driven him all along, since before he was man enough to admit it.

the practically palpable sorrow you feel in the story is, in one way, the narrator's self-pity for himself, although I also think it's the author intentionally giving the narrator's audience a sense of empathy with him and sympathy for him in much the same way the villains of medieval cycle plays were portrayed as the most sympathetic and human. kinda a gut check. we sympathize with him because we all, on some level, are him, both the troll and the man, and we have to realize this if we ever expect to find our way across the bridge.

(now I will reread the story and find out how wrong I am, but it was fun!)

Wow thanks for all your wonderful insights. I enjoyed reading your individual perspective that helps broaden my views on the tale.