The Arena
The Arena
In this short story by Martin Golan, Martin describes the pain a father has about the loss of his only son and child from his first wife. The father can´t help, but think about his son and how his life used to be before this tragic incident occurred in his life. The father is now divorced and has a second wife with whom he is living with now. However, according to the father it is not the same as it used to be with his old wife. They do not have the same “chemistry” as he did with his old wife. As it says in the text, “I could feel her no matter where she was or what she was doing. In the evening we´d, finish conversations we started in our minds in the afternoon.” From this, we can see that he was very attached to his old wife. As mentioned before they also had a son, but that son was adopted because they could not have a child of their own. Their adopted son´s name was Willie. Willie died for unknown reasons.
The main character of this story, the father now lives another life, a new wife and a new son, but he often thinks about the past. Even when he has other jobs to do like for example in the story he takes his son whom is now a teenager to lacrosse training. This story is written in a complicated way because of the fact that we have two stories from two different lives mixed up. One sentence we are in the father´s old life and the next we are in his current life. I believe the writer has written the story in this way so that we can understand how the father has it in his every day. He lives in two worlds, one world are his memories of the past and the other is his actual life. The father does not seem to focus or appreciate his current life. It is as if he is reliving the memories of his old life. From this, we can say that he still has not gotten over the loss of his adoptive son. “When I look again through the front I sense that I am seeing not only ahead but also behind, that I´m glimpsing my future as well as my past” This quote explains very
In this short story by Martin Golan, Martin describes the pain a father has about the loss of his only son and child from his first wife. The father can´t help, but think about his son and how his life used to be before this tragic incident occurred in his life. The father is now divorced and has a second wife with whom he is living with now. However, according to the father it is not the same as it used to be with his old wife. They do not have the same “chemistry” as he did with his old wife. As it says in the text, “I could feel her no matter where she was or what she was doing. In the evening we´d, finish conversations we started in our minds in the afternoon.” From this, we can see that he was very attached to his old wife. As mentioned before they also had a son, but that son was adopted because they could not have a child of their own. Their adopted son´s name was Willie. Willie died for unknown reasons.
The main character of this story, the father now lives another life, a new wife and a new son, but he often thinks about the past. Even when he has other jobs to do like for example in the story he takes his son whom is now a teenager to lacrosse training. This story is written in a complicated way because of the fact that we have two stories from two different lives mixed up. One sentence we are in the father´s old life and the next we are in his current life. I believe the writer has written the story in this way so that we can understand how the father has it in his every day. He lives in two worlds, one world are his memories of the past and the other is his actual life. The father does not seem to focus or appreciate his current life. It is as if he is reliving the memories of his old life. From this, we can say that he still has not gotten over the loss of his adoptive son. “When I look again through the front I sense that I am seeing not only ahead but also behind, that I´m glimpsing my future as well as my past” This quote explains very