Killing Chickens
Killing Chickens
Betrayal and loneliness are two of the hardest emotions to encounter in life. Nevertheless, at some point everyone will experience and be forced to deal with them. This is made even harder when they are caused by someone you love and trust. In Meredith Hall’s “Killing Chickens”, she uses various literary devices such as metaphor, simile, and imagery as she processes her husband’s affair and describes having to kill chickens. Hall’s literary nonfiction is based on the happenings of a specific day that was truly hard to handle after being deceived by ones she loved:
I was killing chickens. It was my 38th birthday. My brother had chosen that morning to tell me that he had caught his wife – my best friend, Ashley – in bed with my husband a year before. I had absorbed the rumors with suspicions about other women for 10 years, but this one, I knew, was going to break us. When I roared upstairs and confronted John, he told me to go fuck myself, ran downstairs and jumped into the truck. Our sons, Sam and Ben, were making a surprise for me at the table; they stood behind me silently in the kitchen door while John gunned the truck out of the yard (5).
This passage helps us understand the present situation in Hall’s life. She found out that her husband is cheating on her and does not show any signs of regret or remorse. In addition, her brother had known for a year and had chosen her birthday to tell her that he found her husband cheating. Lastly, her best friend was whom her husband was cheating with. In these few sentences, the betrayal she feels is made clear. She also explains the reason for having to do such a horrific task that her husband would usually do.
Throughout “Killing Chickens” Hall identifies her children, her husband, and the chickens. One quote the author uses is “It’s all right. Everything is going to be all right. Shh, Silly, shh (7).” The way she is consoling the chickens right before she is about to kill them is the same way
Betrayal and loneliness are two of the hardest emotions to encounter in life. Nevertheless, at some point everyone will experience and be forced to deal with them. This is made even harder when they are caused by someone you love and trust. In Meredith Hall’s “Killing Chickens”, she uses various literary devices such as metaphor, simile, and imagery as she processes her husband’s affair and describes having to kill chickens. Hall’s literary nonfiction is based on the happenings of a specific day that was truly hard to handle after being deceived by ones she loved:
I was killing chickens. It was my 38th birthday. My brother had chosen that morning to tell me that he had caught his wife – my best friend, Ashley – in bed with my husband a year before. I had absorbed the rumors with suspicions about other women for 10 years, but this one, I knew, was going to break us. When I roared upstairs and confronted John, he told me to go fuck myself, ran downstairs and jumped into the truck. Our sons, Sam and Ben, were making a surprise for me at the table; they stood behind me silently in the kitchen door while John gunned the truck out of the yard (5).
This passage helps us understand the present situation in Hall’s life. She found out that her husband is cheating on her and does not show any signs of regret or remorse. In addition, her brother had known for a year and had chosen her birthday to tell her that he found her husband cheating. Lastly, her best friend was whom her husband was cheating with. In these few sentences, the betrayal she feels is made clear. She also explains the reason for having to do such a horrific task that her husband would usually do.
Throughout “Killing Chickens” Hall identifies her children, her husband, and the chickens. One quote the author uses is “It’s all right. Everything is going to be all right. Shh, Silly, shh (7).” The way she is consoling the chickens right before she is about to kill them is the same way