Divorced Beheaded Survived essay
… Divorced, Beheaded, Survived by Robin Black
We have all tried the great sorrow of losing someone in one way or another, whether it is an acquaintance or a close family member. But the subsequent way to accept the death and move on is something we handle differently. This is also the case in the short story …Divorced, Beaded, Survived by Robin Black, where our main character, Sarah, has to deal with her own loss, before she can help her son through his. In this essay I will analyse and interpret the short story ... Divorced, Beheaded, Survived. I will focus on the structure and the use of symbols in the story.
The short story … Divorced, Beheaded, Survived starts in media res, which is shown on page 1 line 1: “Without question, Anne Boleyn was the plum role.” The narrator uses this concept to make the reader dump in to the middle of the story without any introduction. And because of the fact that it begins this way, it may take some time before you realise that the begining also is a flashback. This is generally for the whole story, which is built up on three flashbacks. This is, for example, shown on page 2 lines 34-35: “I don’t know exactly what satisfaction Johnny got from having us act the thing out in my backyard time and time again.” Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of happenings to fill in essential backstory. In this case, the flashbacks are used to tell us about our main character’s childhood, and the things she connects with her brother’s death. It gives us two parallel stories, because the past constant is compared to the present: “I sat next to my son where he lay stretched on the couch (..) “Something bad happened, sweetheart. Something bad.” (…) My son’s face changed as he took in the news. “He’s dead?”” (Pages 3-4, lines 108-119) This shows that she is confronted with the death, which she has tried to escape from in the past. She needs to take a stand on her
We have all tried the great sorrow of losing someone in one way or another, whether it is an acquaintance or a close family member. But the subsequent way to accept the death and move on is something we handle differently. This is also the case in the short story …Divorced, Beaded, Survived by Robin Black, where our main character, Sarah, has to deal with her own loss, before she can help her son through his. In this essay I will analyse and interpret the short story ... Divorced, Beheaded, Survived. I will focus on the structure and the use of symbols in the story.
The short story … Divorced, Beheaded, Survived starts in media res, which is shown on page 1 line 1: “Without question, Anne Boleyn was the plum role.” The narrator uses this concept to make the reader dump in to the middle of the story without any introduction. And because of the fact that it begins this way, it may take some time before you realise that the begining also is a flashback. This is generally for the whole story, which is built up on three flashbacks. This is, for example, shown on page 2 lines 34-35: “I don’t know exactly what satisfaction Johnny got from having us act the thing out in my backyard time and time again.” Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of happenings to fill in essential backstory. In this case, the flashbacks are used to tell us about our main character’s childhood, and the things she connects with her brother’s death. It gives us two parallel stories, because the past constant is compared to the present: “I sat next to my son where he lay stretched on the couch (..) “Something bad happened, sweetheart. Something bad.” (…) My son’s face changed as he took in the news. “He’s dead?”” (Pages 3-4, lines 108-119) This shows that she is confronted with the death, which she has tried to escape from in the past. She needs to take a stand on her