“A relationship is like standing on wet cement. The longer you stand, the more difficult is to leave.” This means that it is hard to leave someone that you have been spending most of your life with, especially someone that you have shared almost everything with. This quote fits very well with the problem for one of the main characters in the story “the Strong Man”
“The Strong Man” by George Garrett takes place in Pisa in Italy. The story is about a woman and her husband Harry. They are sitting in a little trattoria besides the Arno. They are talking about their relationship and about the baby they are expecting. Harry has been cheating on her and every time she finds out, they just leave places. After they have been talking for a while, they leave to get back to the hotel. Suddenly they see a man performing on the streets. Harry calls him “some kind of a strong man”. The strong man has a little struggle getting out of the chains that he has been wrapped tightly in. After they have watched the strong man free himself from the chains, they walk back to the hotel.
The themes in this story are fighting for your relationship and finding you inner strength. The wife has a hard battle with trying to fight for her relationship, but at the same time she needs to find her inner strength to tell Harry that she does not like it when he controls her.
In the beginning of the story we get an almost perfect impression of Harry which is one of the main characters along with his wife. His wife describes him as a charming, handsome guy with small eyes, sandy hair and a great smile, though she thinks there is something strangely unreal about him, like an alien. Even though we get the perfect description of him, we later on realize that that’s only how he looks on the outside. There is an unfaithful man behind that great smile of his. He takes advantage of his wife. Even though he keeps cheating on her she keeps forgiven him. He is the dominating part of their