In
these three short stories, there seems to be an overlapping theme of love in
different forms. In A Worn Path, the
theme of love takes the form of a guardian-child relationship. The story
follows Phoenix Jackson, the single grandmother of a young child and her long
journey to a faraway hospital. She
travels through a long and treacherous way in order to obtain a certain type of
medicine to treat her sick grandson who is considered “a charity case”,
implying that her hardships are possibly in vain. At her old age, she is shown
to often be confused and forgetful “She spoke ‘It was my memory had left me.
There I sat and forgot why I made my long trip’”, yet her grandson is the one
thing that keeps her aging mine clear and determined. From her known background (“’I never did go
to school’”) and attire, it can be inferred that she has lived a hard life
without much wealth, but her actions suggest that she is willing to spend any
meager amount of money she posses on the medicine for her grand child. Her
determination in her actions highlights her protective love towards her
grandson. In the second story A Rose for
Emily, the “love” that is illustrated is somewhat twisted and perverse.
Emily, a hard woman with traditional believes, struggles to accept the change
in the life around her, and is unable to find acceptance in her society. The
first sign of her refusal to accept change is her insistence to remain in her
father’s sheltered life even after his death, and chose to be secluded in the
dusty farmhouse that her father had left, revealing a type of stubborn love
that Emily seems to have towards her father. When a new man, Homer, is seen in
town, the townspeople had hopes that he would be the one to draw Emily out of
her isolation. Yet their anticipation falls apart when the fellow disappears
and is not seen again. It is only years later, after Emily’s death, did the
townspeople realize that Homer’s disappearance was because Emily had supposedly
murdered him with arsenic and preserved his corpse in a desperate attempt to
keep him from walking out of her life, illustrating her perverse love towards
him. The final story Everyday Use is
a story of love turned into pity. In the story, the eldest child from a lowly
family goes off into the world and returns accomplished, and shows her disdain
towards her parent and sibling, whom she now looks down upon. It is seen that
the mother-daughter relationship is strained due to the lack of knowledge Mama
seems to have of her daughter. Wangero (Dee) seems to find glee in pointing out
the simplicity in Mama and Maggie’s life, such as “the benches [the father]
made for the table when [they] couldn’t afford to buy chairs”. She is also seen
to have adopt an air of command, requesting this and that (the quilt originally
for Maggie) from the already meager amount of possessions Mama and Maggie have.
Set 2: Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment. The Life You Save May
Be Your Own. The Minister’s Black Veil.
A
common theme in the second set of three short stories is that of the negative
effects of human desire. In Dr.
Heidegger’s Experiment, Dr. Heidegger’s “friends”, the subjects of his
experiment with the water gained from fountain of youth are delighted to see
that their much hated age fade away and is replaced by appearances of youth.
Although they have now gained a youthful appearance, it is assumed that they
still retained their knowledge and wisdom gained throughout the years. However,
through the depiction of the now transformed subjects of Dr. Heidegger’s
experiment fighting for the Widow Wycherly with abandon, it is revealed that
even the age of wisdom and knowledge cannot suppress the inherent trait of
human desire. In the short story The
Minister’s Black Veil, the way that the townspeople condemned the Minister
for his black veil due to his reluctance to reveal what lay underneath
similarly reflects another aspect of the human desire. As noted by the Minister
himself, the townspeople didn’t alienate the Minister for what lay underneath
the veil, but rather alienated him because they could not tolerate the mere
presence of it, and therefore buried him under with their loathing and
judgment. In the end, even the Minister’s own wife, the one who had vowed to
uphold their love and is supposed to accept him however he is, divulged her own
distrust towards what was hidden beneath the minister’s veil. This revealed how
she was just like the rest of the townspeople, due to their human desire for
general conformity, could not bare the fact that the Minister stood out because
of his black veil. In the last story, The
Life You Save May Be Your Own, the desire illustrated is clearly that for
material goods such as riches. The two central characters of this story both
demonstrate aspects of this desire in their purposes in each other. Ms. Crater
allows her own blind, helpless daughter to be married off to a complete
stranger due to her desire for a son in law who could perform her household
labor free of cost, while Mr. Shiftlet manipulates Ms. Crater and her daughter
into marriage so he may take off in the car he sees as the ultimate reward for
his manipulation. Although both these characters achieve a level of success on
their manipulations, they ultimately condemn the innocent daughter in their
behaviors, highlighting the negative effects of human desire. In all three of
these stories the authors seem to leave an underlying message of how the much
of the human desires affect the world and the things and people they hold with
much negativity.
Set
3: The Lucid Eye in Silver Tower. The Fieldtrip. Winter Dream.
The
common theme in two of the short stories from the last set of stories is the
naivety of youth. In The Lucid Eye In
Silver Town, the protagonist Jay August flashes back to a specific event in
his youth from the perspective of his adult persona, giving the audience a
commentary from his grown self of his actions from the youth. In his youth, he
was frustrated by his father’s meekness and their poverty, wondering why his
father couldn’t just bring in more money for his family. In his adult persona, he reflects upon his
rudeness towards those around him and the immaturity of his childish tantrums.
He also conveys a sense of guilt of his childhood behavior, as he now
understood that his family was still waist deep in the poverty of the dark
times. This ignorance and immaturity of children are similarly reflected in The Field Trip, when Vietnam War veteran
Tim O’Brien returns to the sight of battlefield after twenty years, as a
present to his ten year old daughter Kathleen. He had hoped to grant insight on
his memories and history for his daughter, but was instead met with grumbles
and complaints. His daughter was unable to understand the underlying importance
and weight that the place held for her father, and could only see a barren land
that held no connection to herself. In both these stories, the childhood
naivety and ignorance is highlighted against their parents patience and
understanding. In the last story Winter
Dreams, the story did not focus exclusively on the happenings of the main
character’s youth, but rather on the span of his life. In this story, the third
person narration describes the evolution the main character Dexter through the
span of his life from an innocent child, to a young man, and finally a matured
grown up. His growth is reflected in his changing goals in life. In the first
stage of his life, he was focused on the adults in his surroundings and their
seemingly “strange” behavior, in his teenage years, he was pursuing a girl supposedly
“of his dreams”, and finally in his matured years, it was about his bitterness
now that he’s achieved all his life goals. With a different style of narration
and focus, the first two stories are slightly in contrast with the third,
although they share similar themes concerning the stages of life.
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