Yellow Short Story Analysis
Yellow – Short Story Analysis
Sometimes, one’s problems can get so much out of hand that they will slowly build up to be a massive blockage in one’s life. In Peter Carty’s short story yellow, we hear about Jon a man who generally is not happy with his current life situation. He is dealing with a lot of problems, and instead of coping with them he chooses to escape from them.
Jon is said to be a man in his late thirties, yet still looking fit. “He was overweight but in good physical condition for someone pushing forty.” He works for a London magazine, which has sent him to Egypt to scuba-dive and write about it afterwards. He does not like his job at all, as he hated anything active or sporty. Even though he takes the course, he is so scared of drowning, and convinces himself that he cannot go through with it. His relationship with his girlfriend is also growing stale, “The silences between them had multiplied, then lengthened into an empty continuum.” Basically, everything in his life is described in a negative manner.
Jon is also hearing a negative voice that keeps telling him he is yellow. He wants to ignore the voice, but the voice is still having a negative impact on him, as he lets it taunt him. Jon is a solitary man as there is one other guy in his group, but they do not talk to each other at all through the course. As his life is one big mess, he drinks to escape all his problems, and as a way to cope with it. Still, no matter how much he drank he was haunted and tormented by his problems. "He poured more gin, but no matter how much he swallowed it was never enough."
The themes in this short story cover suicide, fear and loneliness.
Every time he has to dive he immediately starts thinking about drowning, and he thinks of it as being devoured by a big emptiness. The instructor tells him: "You know, you are very close to your panic level underwater," which supports that he is very scared of being underwater. Despite the fact that he has a
Sometimes, one’s problems can get so much out of hand that they will slowly build up to be a massive blockage in one’s life. In Peter Carty’s short story yellow, we hear about Jon a man who generally is not happy with his current life situation. He is dealing with a lot of problems, and instead of coping with them he chooses to escape from them.
Jon is said to be a man in his late thirties, yet still looking fit. “He was overweight but in good physical condition for someone pushing forty.” He works for a London magazine, which has sent him to Egypt to scuba-dive and write about it afterwards. He does not like his job at all, as he hated anything active or sporty. Even though he takes the course, he is so scared of drowning, and convinces himself that he cannot go through with it. His relationship with his girlfriend is also growing stale, “The silences between them had multiplied, then lengthened into an empty continuum.” Basically, everything in his life is described in a negative manner.
Jon is also hearing a negative voice that keeps telling him he is yellow. He wants to ignore the voice, but the voice is still having a negative impact on him, as he lets it taunt him. Jon is a solitary man as there is one other guy in his group, but they do not talk to each other at all through the course. As his life is one big mess, he drinks to escape all his problems, and as a way to cope with it. Still, no matter how much he drank he was haunted and tormented by his problems. "He poured more gin, but no matter how much he swallowed it was never enough."
The themes in this short story cover suicide, fear and loneliness.
Every time he has to dive he immediately starts thinking about drowning, and he thinks of it as being devoured by a big emptiness. The instructor tells him: "You know, you are very close to your panic level underwater," which supports that he is very scared of being underwater. Despite the fact that he has a