Relationships in stories are very important, to who the characters are and how they act. In the stories that were read the relationships shown were both strong and weak. Depending on how the characters act toward each other, it determines their relationship. The stories, Forty-five a Month and The House on the Border, both have very weak relationships, whereas the story, The Ch’i-lin Purse, has a very strong relationship. In a relationship one person sometimes depends on the other, but if the other does not support the other, it becomes weak.
In the story, House on the Border, there was a very weak relationship between the main characters, the people that live in the house and the authorities. The relationship is weak for many reasons. The authorities are not helpful to the people that live in the house. After a thief has just broken into their house, the people that live there tie him up and go to the authorities. They go to different authorities, who just keep passing the responsibility of taking care of the situation on to the other one. “Either all eight of us, my wife and I and the six thieves, will spend the remainder of the year here, or they will include the house in one of the areas, thus enabling me to complain to the authorities.” This shows a weak relationship because the people that lived on the house were very dependent on the authorities, just like any other citizen. This relationship is foreshadowing the author’s take on the his country’s government and how they are not giving aide to the people in the country. That is also another example of a weak relationship, and a more simple example would be between two particular characters.
The story Forty-five a Month is a great example of weak relationship between two characters directly. Two of the main characters, Shanta and Venkat, represent a very weak relationship. Shanta is the daughter of Venkat, they have a weak relationship for a lot of reasons.