Painfully Awkward

In You're Ugly, Too by Lorrie Moore, the main character is a rather interesting woman.  She is from Maryland, and has relocated to the Midwest for work, currently residing along the border between Indiana and Illinois.  Her entire way about her is tired and worn out.  She is distant from the present and often unable to hold a meaningful conversation because she makes strange and random comments.  The most noticeable characteristic is her loneliness.  According to her frequent student reviews, she creates a very personal relationship with her students, "singing them songs, letting them call her at home, even, and ask personal questions," (Moore, 354).  It is as if she is making her students her outlet, as a friend would be.  When set up on a date with a man by her sister, Zoe, the main character, is awkward and has an extremely difficult time holding the conversation.  She finds defense in jokes, and even those are rather strained and painful.  Her best friend appears to be her sister, from whom she still keeps major secrets.  Her pattern is to automatically look at how poorly a situation could turn out, assume that is how reality will be, and protect herself by removing herself from potential involvement in any kind of situation.

More Weird Irony

In Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour, the reader follows the thought process of a woman who is finding out she has lost her husband.  She is described as a delicate woman, even having heart problems, who was handled with care when told the news.  Upon hearing her husband is gone, she reacts in a way that is not entirely unpredictable.  She loses concentration, seems to stare off into space.  She then retreats to her room, where she sits in front of a large window and thinks about her life.  Initially she felt very depressed, thinking she is alone in the world and will have nobody to live for except herself.  But after a few minutes, she begins to feel as if she is now free from anybody's desires but her own.  The speaker said, "And yet she had loved him- sometimes.  Often she had not.  What did it matter!" (Chopin).  She composes herself, and goes back out into the world, now with a new enthusiasm for her freedom.  Yet as she comes downstairs, her husband walks through the front door, making it apparent that his death had been a mistake.  The very shock of seeing him made his wife heart give out, and she passed away.  The irony is that after gaining closure on his death and deciding life may be better without him, the wife is granted another chance at a relationship with her husband, which in turn kills her.

Tragically Ironic

In Raymond Carver's Popular Mechanics, irony is used in one of the most tragic ways.  The story starts with a man packing his things, when a woman who appears to be his wife walks in.  It becomes very obvious from their dialogue that they are lovers who are splitting up, and it has become very bitter between the two.  But as the husband is packing, a picture of the couple child is seen by the wife.  After they both go downstairs  the husband states that he is going to take his child with him.  The father attempts to take the child while the mother is holding it, and a near wrestling match ensues with the baby in hand.  The solution was: "But he would not let go.  He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard.  In this manner, the issue was decided," (Carver).  It is ironic that while this couple was splitting up, the only thing they both really cared about was their child.  Yet they were not able to love the child more than they hated each other, and the poor baby paid the ultimate price.  In this way, both members of this couple seem to ultimately destroy the most important thing in the world to them.  This could be symbolic about how sometimes a bitter divorce can hurt many people outside the marriage.

A Sad Situation

In Margaret Atwood's February, the speaker has a bitter and sad view of love.  He sees it more as a death sentence, and a foolish act we perform as humans.  He shows his disdain for love when he says, "If we wise hominids were sensible, we'd do that too, or eat our young, like sharks.  But it's love that does us in," (Atwood).  His diction throughout the entire story seems to reflect emotional inactivity.  The scene of sitting alone with one's cat during winter is an extremely lonely one.  He reflects on the social interactions of the cat far more than of himself.  This man seems to be nothing more than a hermit that shy's away from any form of human interaction.  But at the end, this man alludes to possibly just being depressed at the moment.  throughout the entire poem, he reflects on how bleak love is, which could be compared to winter.  However, at the end he wishes for it to become spring.  This could mean he wishes to rise out of the hopeless and depressive state that he is currently trapped. 

An Interesting Outlook

In A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, John Donne writes through the perspective of a dying man.  The man tells his love to not mourn because of his death.  He says that death is how we will grow, and they will never truly be apart if they truly love each other.  He said, "Our two souls therefore, which are one, though I must go, endure not yet a breach, but an expansion, like gold to airy thinness beat," (Donne, 802).  He says they can only be separated by there own power.  It will be difficult to maintain this state of mind, with the friends being sad constantly.  But the man strongly advises the woman to think of death as an advancement of life.  It is simply a means of waiting until the woman meets her fate, and they are united again.  The man may not be excited about death, but he is able to believe it will be a good thing.  He eventually leaves his love in his current life, and advances onto the next stage of existence.

Variety in a Small Space

In Wendy Cope's Lonely Hearts, there is an underlying theme.  Although all these advertisements are from people in North London, there appears to he a wide variety of people in the region.  There are ads for a "gay vegetarian whose friends are few" and someone who is "successful, straight, and solvent," (Cope, 973).  This exaggerates the differences in some people.  Humans are an interesting species, because they have such diversity in their behaviors and desires.  Yet throughout the ads, there remains one phrase, and one desire.  "Can Someone make my simple wish come true?  Do you live in North London?  It it you?"  All the people, no matter how unique there true desires are, are seeking happiness and love.  Most all humans are eternally in the pursuit of true happiness.  The one true desire of a person is companionship and happiness.

Spiritual Paralysis

James Joyce uses an overall theme in his short story Eveline.  He admits that this and many of his other works featuring Dublin dealt with the spiritual paralysis of its citizens.  The subject of the story exemplifies this theme.  The title character seems to have to tough life with a particularly cold father.  Pertaining to money the narrator said, "She always gave her entire wages-seven shillings- and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father.  He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn't going to give her his hard-earned money to throw in the streets..." (Joyce, 219).  She wishes she was able to go somewhere else and live a better life.  She actually seems to have found a way out, in the form of a rich man.  They made plans to escape this fate by going to Buenos Aires, a vastly different environment than Dublin.  Yet at the very last second, she decides to stay in her hometown, although she resents some parts of it.  This shows that although she desires to leave, she is unable to move on spiritually or emotionally.

Oh the Suspense

Alice Munro uses the effects of suspense masterfully in her short story: How I Met My Husband.  The reader is initially finds the narrator to be a hard-working and quite girl.  She seems to not be very privileged, often finding the needs of her employers to be ridiculous.  Soon a handsome looking pilot shows up and befriends the family.  The pilot, Chris, is always very polite and kind to the narrator, which ultimately proved to be simple manipulation.  After kissing the narrator in his private tent, he flies off without his fiancee, leaving the narrator to wait for a letter from him letting her know where to come visit.  Despite being called very offensive names by Chris' fiancee, the narrator continues to meet the mailman everyday in hopes of receiving the letter.  The reader finally gets the resolution to this love story in the closing words.  "So I stopped meeting the mail.  If there were women all through life waiting, and women busy and not waiting, I knew which I had to be. (Munro, 146).  This courtship is built up heavily throughout the story, and it receives a rather shocking turn.  This twist certainly outlines the evil and manipulative characteristics of Chris.