The rental heart
The Rental Heart
Kirsty Logan is an award-winning writer. She was born in 1984 and is currently living in Glasgow with her Girlfriend.
The Rental Heart is a science-fiction short story, which takes place in the future. The short story is about a person, who, throughout his/her life, has to replace his/her heart every time he/she finds a new lover. The replaceable hearts are mechanical hearts, which apparently function like normal flesh-hearts even though the mechanical hearts literally shatter in your chest if you get heartbroken.
The narrator of the story is a first person narrator. The short story is told from a person, whose gender and name are unknown.
The characters in the Rental Heart, including the protagonist, are indubitably flat characters. They lack description, complexity and substantial growth. We don’t even get the name of the protagonist.
The protagonist is settled with a girl called Grace, which leads us to believe that the protagonist of the story is a male. But through a flashback we get to know that the protagonist has had different lovers including male lovers. The fact that the protagonist has had male- and female lovers makes it impossible for us to determine whether the protagonist is a man or a woman. Kirsty Logan is in a relationship with a girl. The reason why she does not reveal the gender of the protagonist could be that it shouldn’t matter to the reader. Nowadays it is quite normal to be homosexual, and by not mentioning the gender of the protagonist, Kirsty Logan emphasizes that fact.
There are different science-fiction elements in The Rental Heart. The mechanical hearts, which can be rented from a heart rental place, is a science-fiction element. The mechanical hearts are inserted in the chest and can be used to contain the love and the memories from the person you love. The heart can be tuned to beat the morse code of your lover’s name. If the heart is removed from the chest, the memories and love contained in the heart
Kirsty Logan is an award-winning writer. She was born in 1984 and is currently living in Glasgow with her Girlfriend.
The Rental Heart is a science-fiction short story, which takes place in the future. The short story is about a person, who, throughout his/her life, has to replace his/her heart every time he/she finds a new lover. The replaceable hearts are mechanical hearts, which apparently function like normal flesh-hearts even though the mechanical hearts literally shatter in your chest if you get heartbroken.
The narrator of the story is a first person narrator. The short story is told from a person, whose gender and name are unknown.
The characters in the Rental Heart, including the protagonist, are indubitably flat characters. They lack description, complexity and substantial growth. We don’t even get the name of the protagonist.
The protagonist is settled with a girl called Grace, which leads us to believe that the protagonist of the story is a male. But through a flashback we get to know that the protagonist has had different lovers including male lovers. The fact that the protagonist has had male- and female lovers makes it impossible for us to determine whether the protagonist is a man or a woman. Kirsty Logan is in a relationship with a girl. The reason why she does not reveal the gender of the protagonist could be that it shouldn’t matter to the reader. Nowadays it is quite normal to be homosexual, and by not mentioning the gender of the protagonist, Kirsty Logan emphasizes that fact.
There are different science-fiction elements in The Rental Heart. The mechanical hearts, which can be rented from a heart rental place, is a science-fiction element. The mechanical hearts are inserted in the chest and can be used to contain the love and the memories from the person you love. The heart can be tuned to beat the morse code of your lover’s name. If the heart is removed from the chest, the memories and love contained in the heart